Temporal Perspectives on Environmental Change and Extinction in Madagascar

9306603 Burney古生态技术将用于刻画马达加斯加的人为和背景水平的环境变化和灭绝。将在长时间尺度上测量生物群落的趋势，以提供有关时间变异性、古生物地理分布以及评估和预测当前和未来生物对环境压力的反应所需的致病机制的信息。地层微化石分析将与树木年代学、古生物学、考古学和地质年代学的合作努力相结合，评估有关全新世晚期亚化石灭绝原因的相互竞争的假设，并开始在生态和进化时间尺度上构建马达加斯加生物变化的模型。这项研究是对大规模物种灭绝的原因进行跨学科研究的理想机会。特别是，该研究将试图评估人类土地利用与气候变化对热带生物多样性模式的影响。这些信息对于理解和预测未来人类活动对全球物种丰富度的影响至关重要。＊＊＊

9306603 Burney Paleoecological techniques will be employed to characterize anthropogenic versus background-level environmental change and extinction in Madagascar. Trends in biotic communities will be measured on long time scales to contribute information on temporal variability, paleobiogeographic distributions, and causative mechanisms needed to evaluate and predict present and future biotic responses to environmental stress. Stratigraphic microfossil analyses, will be combined with collaborative efforts in dendrochronology, paleontology, archaeology, and geochronology to evaluate competing hypotheses concerning the causes of the late Holocene subfossil extinctions, and to begin constructing models of biotic change in Madagascar on ecological and evolutionary time scales. %%% This research represents an ideal opportunity to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the causes of large-scale extinctions. In particular, the research will attempt to evaluate the effects of human land use versus climate change on patterns of biodiversity in the tropics. Such information is essential for understanding and predicting future man-induced changes on global species richness. ***