The deforestation of Easter Island

• Published in: Biological Reviews
• Main Author: Rull, Valentí
• Other Authors: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Philosofical Society 2020
• Subjects: pollen analysis; Agriculture; human disturbance; fire; drought; Climate change; last millennium; Cultural collapse; forest clearing; Rapa Nui; Abrupt Island; Rapa
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/193356; https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12556

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...