Wetlands of North Africa During the Mid-Holocene Were at Least Five Times the Area Today

Weizhe Chen; Philippe Ciais; Chunjing Qiu; Agnès Ducharne; Dan Zhu; Shushi Peng; Pascale Braconnot; Chunju Huang

doi:10.1029/2021GL094194

Wetlands of North Africa During the Mid-Holocene Were at Least Five Times the Area Today

Weizhe Chen, Philippe Ciais, Chunjing Qiu, Agnès Ducharne, Dan Zhu, Shushi Peng, Pascale Braconnot, Chunju Huang

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Sahara was significantly wetter and greener than today during the mid-Holocene (∼6,000 years before present), and those conditions were likely maintained by feedbacks from evaporating wetlands and riparian zones. A lack of spatially continuous wetland reconstruction is the major obstacle to investigating their impacts on climate and vegetation during that epoch. Here, we estimate high-resolution gridded wetland distribution up to 15″ in the mid-Holocene North Africa obtained with three statistical and hydrological modeling approaches forced by enhanced and calibrated precipitation from climate models. These wetland models have good performance for present-day conditions and reproduce mid-Holocene hydrological elements evaluated by 297 paleo-records. Simulation results show that 18.9 ± 4.0% of land surface in North Africa was covered by wetlands during the mid-Holocene. Our results highlight the impact of natural climate change on wetland areas and provide a data set for modeling studies to include wetland feedbacks.

Original language	English
Article number	e2021GL094194
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	48
Issue number	20
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094194
State	Published - 28 Oct 2021
Externally published	Yes

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10.1029/2021GL094194

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abstract = "The Sahara was significantly wetter and greener than today during the mid-Holocene (∼6,000 years before present), and those conditions were likely maintained by feedbacks from evaporating wetlands and riparian zones. A lack of spatially continuous wetland reconstruction is the major obstacle to investigating their impacts on climate and vegetation during that epoch. Here, we estimate high-resolution gridded wetland distribution up to 15″ in the mid-Holocene North Africa obtained with three statistical and hydrological modeling approaches forced by enhanced and calibrated precipitation from climate models. These wetland models have good performance for present-day conditions and reproduce mid-Holocene hydrological elements evaluated by 297 paleo-records. Simulation results show that 18.9 ± 4.0\% of land surface in North Africa was covered by wetlands during the mid-Holocene. Our results highlight the impact of natural climate change on wetland areas and provide a data set for modeling studies to include wetland feedbacks.",

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T1 - Wetlands of North Africa During the Mid-Holocene Were at Least Five Times the Area Today

AU - Chen, Weizhe

AU - Ciais, Philippe

AU - Qiu, Chunjing

AU - Ducharne, Agnès

AU - Zhu, Dan

AU - Peng, Shushi

AU - Braconnot, Pascale

AU - Huang, Chunju

PY - 2021/10/28

Y1 - 2021/10/28

N2 - The Sahara was significantly wetter and greener than today during the mid-Holocene (∼6,000 years before present), and those conditions were likely maintained by feedbacks from evaporating wetlands and riparian zones. A lack of spatially continuous wetland reconstruction is the major obstacle to investigating their impacts on climate and vegetation during that epoch. Here, we estimate high-resolution gridded wetland distribution up to 15″ in the mid-Holocene North Africa obtained with three statistical and hydrological modeling approaches forced by enhanced and calibrated precipitation from climate models. These wetland models have good performance for present-day conditions and reproduce mid-Holocene hydrological elements evaluated by 297 paleo-records. Simulation results show that 18.9 ± 4.0% of land surface in North Africa was covered by wetlands during the mid-Holocene. Our results highlight the impact of natural climate change on wetland areas and provide a data set for modeling studies to include wetland feedbacks.

AB - The Sahara was significantly wetter and greener than today during the mid-Holocene (∼6,000 years before present), and those conditions were likely maintained by feedbacks from evaporating wetlands and riparian zones. A lack of spatially continuous wetland reconstruction is the major obstacle to investigating their impacts on climate and vegetation during that epoch. Here, we estimate high-resolution gridded wetland distribution up to 15″ in the mid-Holocene North Africa obtained with three statistical and hydrological modeling approaches forced by enhanced and calibrated precipitation from climate models. These wetland models have good performance for present-day conditions and reproduce mid-Holocene hydrological elements evaluated by 297 paleo-records. Simulation results show that 18.9 ± 4.0% of land surface in North Africa was covered by wetlands during the mid-Holocene. Our results highlight the impact of natural climate change on wetland areas and provide a data set for modeling studies to include wetland feedbacks.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85118238790

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DO - 10.1029/2021GL094194

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JF - Geophysical Research Letters

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ER -

Wetlands of North Africa During the Mid-Holocene Were at Least Five Times the Area Today

Abstract

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