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Science 22 December 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5500, pp. 2291 - 2294
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5500.2291
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Reports

Millennial-Scale Dynamics of Southern Amazonian Rain Forests

Francis E. Mayle,1* Rachel Burbridge,1 Timothy J. Killeen23

Amazonian rain forest-savanna boundaries are highly sensitive to climatic change and may also play an important role in rain forest speciation. However, their dynamics over millennial time scales are poorly understood. Here, we present late Quaternary pollen records from the southern margin of Amazonia, which show that the humid evergreen rain forests of eastern Bolivia have been expanding southward over the past 3000 years and that their present-day limit represents the southernmost extent of Amazonian rain forest over at least the past 50,000 years. This rain forest expansion is attributed to increased seasonal latitudinal migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which can in turn be explained by Milankovitch astronomic forcing.

1 Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
2 Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International, 2501 M Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20037, USA.
3 Museo de Historia Natural "Noel Kempff Mercado," Avenida Irala 565, Casilla 2489, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: fem1{at}leicester.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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