Long-Term Environmental Change

Abstract

Time series for the Quaternary, which covers the past 1.6 million years, reveal large, continuous, and sometimes abrupt ecological and environmental changes on time scales of decades to thousands of years. For biological variables, the time series can involve data from single localities or multiple localities over a spectrum of areas, and therefore can appear as single time series, multiple time series, or time series of maps for regions, continents, and the globe. These figures can show data from single organisms (e.g., tree rings), multiple organisms, individual taxa, or multiple taxa. The biological data and time series can be viewed in the context of time series for environmental systems such as climate, soils, and geomorphologic features. The techniques for studying these long ecological time series are many and include statistical analysis, numerical modeling, and simulation. The selection of techniques depends on the problem being investigated and the types of data available.