Check out our new paper! I’m so excited to see this work out. Here is a summary of our findings: Resilient landscapes preserve terrestrial biodiversity despite environmental changes. Here, we analyze North American landscape resilience over 20,000 years by examining the residence and recovery times of plant biomes preserved in the fossil pollen record. Biomes have a median residence time of 240-460 years and a median recovery time of 140-290 years. Rapid temperature change reduces residence times. Biodiverse biomes reestablish more quickly. Importantly, landscapes today are experiencing resilience that is lower than any we have seen since the end-Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, foreboding potential extinctions to come. Going forward, we must bolster resilience by connecting landscapes and prioritizing biodiverse regions.
New Paper! Plant biomes demonstrate that landscape resilience today is the lowest it has been since end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions
