The deforestation of Easter Island

Easter Island deforestation has traditionally been viewed as an abrupt island-wide event caused by the prehistoric Rapanui civilization, which precipitated its own cultural collapse. This view emerges from early palaeoecological analyses of lake sediments, which showed a sudden and total replacement...

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Main Author: Rull, Valentí
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:unknown
Published: PeerJ 2019
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Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.pdf
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.xml
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.html
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spelling crpeerj:10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2 2024-06-02T07:54:11+00:00 The deforestation of Easter Island Rull, Valentí 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2 https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.pdf https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.xml https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.html unknown PeerJ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ posted-content 2019 crpeerj https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2 2024-05-07T14:14:27Z Easter Island deforestation has traditionally been viewed as an abrupt island-wide event caused by the prehistoric Rapanui civilization, which precipitated its own cultural collapse. This view emerges from early palaeoecological analyses of lake sediments, which showed a sudden and total replacement of palm pollen by grass pollen shortly after Polynesian settlement (800-1200 CE). However, further palaeoecological research has challenged this view, showing that the apparent abruptness and island-wide synchronicity of forest removal was an artefact due to the occurrence of a sedimentary gap of several millennia that prevented a detailed record of the replacement of palm-dominated forests by grass meadows. During the last decade, several continuous (gap-free) and chronologically coherent sediment cores encompassing the last millennia have been retrieved and analysed, providing a new picture of forest removal on Easter Island. According to these analyses, deforestation was not abrupt but gradual and occurred at different times and rates, depending on the site. Regarding the causes, humans were not the only factors responsible for forest clearing, as climatic droughts as well as climate-human-landscape feedbacks and synergies also played a role. In summary, the deforestation of Easter Island was a complex process that was spatially and temporally heterogeneous and took place under the actions and interactions of both natural and anthropogenic drivers. In addition, archaeological evidence shows that the Rapanui civilization was resilient to deforestation and remained healthy until European contact, which contradicts the occurrence of a cultural collapse. Further research should aim to obtain new continuous cores and make use of recently developed biomarker analyses to advance towards a holistic view of the patterns, causes and consequences of Easter Island deforestation. Other/Unknown Material Abrupt Island PeerJ Publishing Abrupt Island ENVELOPE(57.767,57.767,-67.000,-67.000)
institution Open Polar
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description Easter Island deforestation has traditionally been viewed as an abrupt island-wide event caused by the prehistoric Rapanui civilization, which precipitated its own cultural collapse. This view emerges from early palaeoecological analyses of lake sediments, which showed a sudden and total replacement of palm pollen by grass pollen shortly after Polynesian settlement (800-1200 CE). However, further palaeoecological research has challenged this view, showing that the apparent abruptness and island-wide synchronicity of forest removal was an artefact due to the occurrence of a sedimentary gap of several millennia that prevented a detailed record of the replacement of palm-dominated forests by grass meadows. During the last decade, several continuous (gap-free) and chronologically coherent sediment cores encompassing the last millennia have been retrieved and analysed, providing a new picture of forest removal on Easter Island. According to these analyses, deforestation was not abrupt but gradual and occurred at different times and rates, depending on the site. Regarding the causes, humans were not the only factors responsible for forest clearing, as climatic droughts as well as climate-human-landscape feedbacks and synergies also played a role. In summary, the deforestation of Easter Island was a complex process that was spatially and temporally heterogeneous and took place under the actions and interactions of both natural and anthropogenic drivers. In addition, archaeological evidence shows that the Rapanui civilization was resilient to deforestation and remained healthy until European contact, which contradicts the occurrence of a cultural collapse. Further research should aim to obtain new continuous cores and make use of recently developed biomarker analyses to advance towards a holistic view of the patterns, causes and consequences of Easter Island deforestation.
format Other/Unknown Material
author Rull, Valentí
spellingShingle Rull, Valentí
The deforestation of Easter Island
author_facet Rull, Valentí
author_sort Rull, Valentí
title The deforestation of Easter Island
title_short The deforestation of Easter Island
title_full The deforestation of Easter Island
title_fullStr The deforestation of Easter Island
title_full_unstemmed The deforestation of Easter Island
title_sort deforestation of easter island
publisher PeerJ
publishDate 2019
url http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.pdf
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.xml
https://peerj.com/preprints/27706v2.html
long_lat ENVELOPE(57.767,57.767,-67.000,-67.000)
geographic Abrupt Island
geographic_facet Abrupt Island
genre Abrupt Island
genre_facet Abrupt Island
op_rights https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27706v2
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