“New research, which was presented this month at the virtual annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, solidifies that theory. […] By looking at shifts in fossilized pollen records gleaned from records of sediment cores, they were able to determine what types of vegetation lived in different locations across North America at different times. In particular, they looked for signs of abrupt, system-wide transitions […]”

“The researchers looked at how the pollen records changed over 250 year-long periods. Throughout the Pleistocene, they observed an average of 10 abrupt shifts across 100 sites in each 250 year stretch. That’s a massive amount of fast change, but even more change followed once humans showed up in force. Between 1700 and 1950, the researchers observed 20 abrupt changes per 100 sites.”

Read the Gizmodo article about my research with Dr. Trisha Spanbauer here.