Encarni Montoya

Institute of Geosciences | IGEO

Tropical forests are changing in composition and productivity, probably in response to changes in climate and disturbances. The responses to these multiple environmental drivers, and the mechanisms underlying the changes, remain largely unknown. Here, we use a functional trait approach on timescales of 10,000 years to assess how climate and disturb...

Human activity has fundamentally altered wildfire on Earth, creating serious consequences for human health, global biodiversity, and climate change. However, it remains difficult to predict fire interactions with land use, management, and climate change, representing a serious knowledge gap and vulnerability. We used expert assessment to combine op...

COORDINACIÓN José S. Carrión EQUIPO EDITORIAL José S. Carrión, Manuel Munuera, Juan Ochando, Manuel Casas-Gallego Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera Trabajo artístico y gráfico Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro Pablo...

COORDINACIÓN José S. Carrión EQUIPO EDITORIAL José S. Carrión, Juan Ochando, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Casas-Gallego, Gabriela Amorós Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera Trabajo artístico Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro...

Reference ecosystems used in tropical forest restoration lack the temporal dimension required to characterise a mature or intact vegetation community. Here we provide a practical ‘palaeo-reference ecosystem’ for the eastern Andean forests of Ecuador to complement the standard ‘reference ecosystem’ approach. Pollen assemblages from sedimentary archi...

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.

The Pyrenean Lake Montcortès sediments hold the longest continuous and absolutely varve-dated record of the Mediterranean region, encompassing the last three millennia, from the Late Bronze Age to the present. The reconstruction of vegetation and landscape dynamics during this time period has advanced gradually, following the progress of absolute d...

Volcanic activity impacts ecosystems sometimes with multiple, complex and long-lasting consequences, including volcanic tephra (airborne material) causing widespread disruptions. We study the effects of tephra deposition around two tropical lakes of Ecuador using a multi-proxy analysis of lake sediment archives spanning the last 2000 years. We pres...

The Pyrenean Lake Montcortès sediments hold the longest continuous and absolutely varve-dated record of the Mediterranean region, encompassing the last three millennia, from the Late Bronze Age to the present. The reconstruction of vegetation and landscape dynamics during this time period has advanced gradually, following the progress of absolute d...

Unparalleled levels of tropical forest restoration are required to counter decades of deforestation, minimise losses in biodiversity and aid in combating climate change. Restoration projects which disregard the temporal dimension (decades-centuries) risk restoring a degraded ecosystem, as our expectations of what is ‘normal’ diminish over generatio...

Amazonia is the world’s largest tropical forest and is globally important in terms of its ecosystem services and extraordinarily high levels of biodiversity. The origin of this biodiversity has long been attributed to purely natural drivers, with little consideration given to the legacy of millennia of human land use. Here, the potential contributi...

Amazonia is the world’s largest tropical forest and is globally important in terms of its ecosystem services and extraordinarily high levels of biodiversity. The origin of this biodiversity has long been attributed to purely natural drivers, with little consideration given to the legacy of millennia of human land use. Here, the potential contributi...

Abstract Coastal wetlands have been proposed as highly threatened by the ongoing and future climatic change, including projected sea-level changes as an additional forcing factor compared to more inland locations. The limited knowledge generated to date in this topic has been primarily focused on those areas attaining a high population density, an...

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) deforestation has traditionally been viewed as a single event, synchronous in time and space across the island and caused by Polynesian settlers. However, recent studies have challenged this idea, introducing the concept of spatiotemporal heterogeneity and suggesting a role for climate change. This paper presents a continuo...

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) deforestation has traditionally been viewed as a single event, synchronous in time and space across the island and caused by Polynesian settlers. However, recent studies have challenged this idea introducing the concept of spatio-temporal heterogeneity and suggesting a role for climate change. This paper presents a continuo...

This chapter reviews the available paleoecological information on Pantepui since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in order to reconstruct the ecological dynamics that have led to the present configuration of plant communities and to unravel the potential environmental drivers involved, with emphasis on regional climate changes and fire. To date, no L...

This book commemorates the centenary of the first quantitative pollen diagram by Lennart von Post, the founder of paleoecological palynology. The main aim is to provide a thorough view of the use of palynology in aspects such as the reconstruction of Quaternary vegetation and environmental changes, the role of natural and anthropogenic drivers in t...

This chapter reviews the available paleoecological information on Pantepui since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), in order to reconstruct the ecological dynamics that have led to the present configuration of plant communities and to unravel the potential environmental drivers involved, with emphasis on regional climate changes and fire. To date, no...

A high-resolution (average 6 years/sampling interval) palaeoenvironmental reconstruction using pollen, charcoal and non-pollen palynomorphswas carried out on annually laminated sediments of LakeMontcortès (southern Pyrenean flank). The results were combined with historical data to better understand landscape evolution and human interaction during t...

European colonization of South America instigated a continental-scale depopulation of its indigenous peoples. The impact of depopulation on the tropical forests of South America varied across the continent. Furthermore, the role that indigenous peoples played in transforming the biodiverse tropical forests of the Andean–Amazonian corridor before AD...

This paper reviews the existing hypotheses concerning the cultural shift from the Ancient Cult (AC) to the Birdman Cult (BC) that occurred on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) during the last millennium and introduces a holistic new hypothesis called CLAFS (Climate-Landscape-Anthropogenic Feedbacks and Synergies), which considers a variety of potential driv...

Tropical ecosystems play a key role in many aspects of Earth system dynamics currently of global concern, including carbon sequestration and biodiversity. To accurately understand complex tropical systems it is necessary to parameterise key ecological aspects, such as rates of change (RoC), species turnover, dynamism, resilience, or stability. To o...

Aquatic ecosystems in the tropical Andes are under increasing pressure from human modification of the landscape (deforestation and dams) and climatic change (increase of extreme events and 1.5 °C on average temperatures are projected for AD 2100). However, the resilience of these ecosystems to perturbations is poorly understood. Here we use a multi...

Samples taken from sedimentary archives indicate that fungal non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) can be used to provide information on forest cover, fire regime, and depositional environment in the eastern Andean flank montane forest of Ecuador. Within the 52 samples examined, 54 fungal NPP morphotypes are reported, of which 25 were found to be previous...

Understanding the impact of landscape-scale disturbance events during the last glacial period is vital in accurately reconstructing the ecosystem dynamics of montane environments. Here, a sedimentary succession from the tropical montane cloud forest of the eastern Andean flank of Ecuador provides evidence of the role of non-climate drivers of veget...

Late Pleistocene and Holocene paleoecological reconstructions from the neotropical Gran Sabana (GS) provide objective criteria to assess realistic and feasible restoration targets and to appraise the potential effects of global warming on the GS landscapes and ecosystems.

The paucity of palaeoecological data is acute in the Neotropics, where the low number of good quality records (with reliable dating and continuous sedimentation) prevents the development of a regional understanding of the vegetation and climate dynamics. Within the Neotropics, low wetlands are particularly poorly known due to the scarcity of potent...

Lakes with varved sediments are especially well suited for high resolution paleoecological reconstruction because they assure accurate time control. Multi-proxy studies at high resolution provide opportunities to examine frequency and magnitude of abrupt events in response to either climatic change or human impact. Also, these data could be used to...

The Guayana Highlands (GH) are natural laboratories to study the influence of natural environmental drivers on the ecology and evolution of the neotropical biota. The GH flat summits have been characterized by fairly constant vegetation patterns during the Holocene, with the exception of a few sites close to altitudinal ecotones. In this paper, we...

The Guayana Highlands (GH) are natural laboratories to study the influence of environmental drivers on neotropical ecosystems. The GH summits have been characterized by constant vegetation patterns during the Holocene, except for a few sites close to altitudinal ecotones. Here, we report a new pollen record showing two significant vegetation shifts...

Tropical wetlands are ecosystems characterised by the occurrence of a more or less extended flooded period. Their unique environments support a wide array of ecological and socio-economic values appreciated from local to global scales. It has been proposed that coastal wetlands could be highly threatened by the ongoing and future climatic change, in...

Presented here is the first chironomid calibration data set for tropical South America. Surface sediments were collected from 59 lakes across Bolivia (15 lakes), Peru (32 lakes), and Ecuador (12 lakes) between 2004 and 2013 over an altitudinal gradient from 150 m above sea level (a.s.l) to 4655 m a.s.l, between 0–17◦ S and 64–78◦ W. The study sites...

An improved understanding of present-day climate variability and change relies on high-quality data sets from the past 2 millennia. Global efforts to model regional climate modes are in the process of being validated against, and integrated with, records of past vegetation change. For South America, however, the full potential of vegetation records...

Mauritia flexuosa L.f. is one of the more widely distributed neotropical palms and is intensively used by humans. This palm can grow in tropical rainforests or can develop a particular type of virtually monospecific communities restricted to warm and wet lowlands of the Orinoco and Amazon basins. It has been proposed that, during the Last Glacial M...

Presented here is the first chironomid calibration dataset for tropical South America. Surface sediments were collected from 59 lakes across Bolivia (15 lakes), Peru (32 lakes) and Ecuador (12 lakes) between 2004 and 2013 over an altitudinal gradient from 150 m above sea level (a.s.l) to 4655 m a.s.l, between 0-17°S and 64-78°W. The study sites cov...

The Gran Sabana (GS) is a key region for understanding the origin of neotropical savannas and is an ideal location to test ecological hypotheses on long-term vegetation dynamics under the action of natural and anthropogenic drivers. The conservation of the GS is a controversial issue because of the confluence of disparate cultural and socio-economi...

An improved understanding of present-day climate variability and change relies on high-quality data sets from the past two millennia. Global efforts to reconstruct regional climate modes are in the process of validating and integrating paleo-proxies. For South America, however, the full potential of vegetation records for evaluating and improving c...

Understanding the origin and ecological dynamics of tropical savannas in terms of natural and human drivers of change is a hot topic that may be crucial for conservation. The case of the Gran Sabana (GS), a huge savanna island within the Amazon-Orinoco rainforests, is presented as a pilot study for the Neotropics. A vivid debate exists on whether o...

Understanding the origin and ecological dynamics of tropical savannas in terms of natural and human drivers of change is a hot topic that may be crucial for conservation. The case of the Gran Sabana (GS), a huge savanna island within the Amazon-Orinoco rainforests, is presented as a pilot study for the Neotropics. A vivid debate exists on whether o...

The vegetation of the southern Gran Sabana (SE Venezuela) consists primarily of a treeless savanna with morichales (Mauritia flexuosa palm stands), despite the prevailing climate being more favorable for the development of extensive rainforests. Here, we discuss the results of our 8700-year paleoecological reconstruction from Lake Encantada based o...

Pollen assemblages are used extensively across the globe, providing information on various characteristics of the vegetation communities that originally produced them, and how these vary temporally and spatially. However, anticipating a statistically based robust pollen count size, sufficient to characterise a pollen assemblage is difficult; partic...

Archaeology, historical documents and palaeoecology have revealed high anthropogenic influences on landscape shaping in the Pyrenees (SW Europe), especially during the last millennia. Non pollen palynomorphs (NPP) surveys have contributed to reconstruct heterogeneous patterns of landscape evolution in this area, recording some human activities such...

Non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) are microfossils other than pollen and spores from plants found within samples prepared for pollen analyses. Their utility as paleoecological indicators is rapidly growing because of their potential to complement palynological reconstructions of past communities and environments. The study of modern NPP sedimentation...

* Priority question exercises are becoming an increasingly common tool to frame future agendas in conservation and ecological science. They are an effective way to identify research foci that advance the field and that also have high policy and conservation relevance. * To date, there has been no coherent synthesis of key questions and priority re...

This paper summarises the NPP studies developed so far in a wide range of environments from Venezuelan lowlands, midlands and highlands, as an example of a growing discipline in a Neotropical area. The studies discussed include both modern analogues from surface sediments and Late Quaternary sequences combining pollen and spores with NPP analyses....

NPP research is characterized for using biological remains of different biological nature, which requires the involvement of a varied range of disciplines such as Mycology, Entomology or Phycology, among others. The current dispersion of the available information results in identification difficulties and a significant waste of time, potentially le...

Available at: http://www.paleodiversitas.org/

Preliminary palynological analysis of a Holocene peat bog from Apakará-tepui (Chimantá Massif, Venezuelan Guayana).- This paper reports the preliminary palynological results, at a millennial scale, of a Holocene peat bog sequence, since around 8.0 cal kyr BP to the present, obtained in the summit of the Apakará-tepui (2170 m elevation), in the Chim...

The southern Gran Sabana (SE Venezuela) holds a particular type of neotropical savanna characterized by the local occurrence of morichales (Mauritia palm swamps), in a climate apparently more suitable for rain forests. We present a paleoecological analysis of the last millennia of Lake Chonita (4°39′N–61°0′W, 884 m elevation), based on biological a...

This paper shows a Holocene paleoecological reconstruction based on a peat bog sequence (El Paují, 4°28′N–61°35′W, 865 m elevation) located in the transition zone between the Gran Sabana (SE Venezuela) savannas and the Amazon rainforests. Paleoecological trends are based on the analysis of pollen and pteridophyte spores, algal and animal remains, f...

The Gran Sabana (GS) lies in the Neotropical Guayana region of Venezuela (Southeastern Venezuela). The GS vegetation is characterized by a huge island of savannas intermingled with forests patches, in a warm and wet climate, apparently more suitable for the occurrence of rain forests. Evidence of late Holocene paleoclimatic changes in some Neotropi...

The southern Gran Sabana region (SE Venezuela) holds a particular type of savanna characterized by the local occurrence of ( palm swamps), in a climate apparently more suitable for rain forests. We present a paleoecological analysis of a Late Holocene sequence from Lake Chonita based on physical and biological proxies. Savannas dominated the region...

Venezuela has significant advantages for paleoclimatic and paleoecological study, namely: 1) its climatic regime, largely controlled by the seasonal movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone; 2) its varied physiography (Andean high-mountains, tabular Guayana Highlands, Orinoco-Amazon lowlands and delta, Caribbean coastsislands); 3) its mega-di...

The occurrence of the Younger Dryas cold reversal in northern South America midlands and lowlands remains controversial. We present a palaeoecological analysis of a Late Glacial lacustrine section from a midland lake (Lake Chonita, 4.6501 °N, 61.0157 °W, 884 m elevation) located in the Venezuelan Gran Sabana, based on physical and biological proxie...

This chapter summarizes and updates the main Quaternary paleoclimatic and sea-level trends recorded in Venezuela, and provides a paleoenvironmental framework for studies addressing biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary topics. Venezuela has a number of localities that have provided paleoenvironmental sequences in the neotropical, circum-Car...

The occurrence, or not, of the Younger Dryas cold reversal in the tropical Andes remains a controversial topic. This study reports a clear signal for this event in the Venezuelan Andes, employing high-resolution palynological analysis of a well-dated sediment core from Laguna de Los Anteojos, situated around 3900 m elevation, within grass páramo ve...

Palynological studies including records of non-pollen palynomorphs (NPP) are uncommon in the Neotropics, in spite of their demonstrated usefulness in other regions. Modern analog studies to improve palaeoecological interpretations of NPP are even more scarce. Here, we report the NPP assemblages recorded in modern surface samples from an altitudinal...

A radiocarbon dated sediment record from Laguna de Los Anteojos, a cirque lake in the Mérida Andes of Venezuela, indicates that warmer and wetter atmospheric conditions occurred in the northern tropics at the onset of the Bølling (∼ 14,600 cal yr BP), and abruptly colder and drier conditions around the time of the Younger Dryas (YD). Geochemical an...