Israel Coast

Mediterranean

Ecosystems in Long-

Term changesPresenter: Minyi Chen

Reference Paper author: David Kaniewski,

Elise Van Campo,et.al.

Israel Akko

Study

By the eastern end

of

the Mediterranean

Sea at longitudes 34°and 36°E

Typical

Mediterranean

climate with cool, rainy winters and

long, hot, dry

summers.

Method: Arboreal Pollen (AP)

Pollen deviation from the mean population size (by “subtract mean” method)

Mean population size: the total amount of pollen collected from different layers, divided by # of layers

Method

Pollen-derived clusters (Pd Clusters) both modern and fossil record of different plants pollen --- made phylogenetic tree by neighbor joining to show the ecosystem distribution and how they change in the coast of Israel

PCA[3] (Principal component analysis) and CABFAC[4] (Calgary-Brown Factor Analysis) multi-factors effect analysis which factor impact eco-change the most.[3]

The BIOME4 [2] based comparison of pollen concentration—vegetation model shows how plants were changing with climate and effected by multi-factors—specifically precipitation.

Result:Phylogenetic treeNeighbor Joining analysis group 74 taxa into 9 categories

Wet woodland

Open forest Scrubs

Dry steppe

Phrygana-batha

Cultivated species and weeds

Dry shrub land

Wet steppe

Fen trees

Open forest

Wet woodland

Modern pollen

distribution----wood/ wetland plants

Cultivated species

weeds

Open forest

Fen trees

Wet woodland

Wet steppe

Open steppe shrubland

woodland

Close sea far from sea

Modern pollen

distribution---- dryland shrub/grass

Dry shrubland

Phrygana-batha

Scrubs

Dry steppe

Close sea Far from

sea

Open steppe shrubland

woodland

P-E: annual precipitation

minus evapotranspiration-evapotranspiration--high high value = too much water for evapotranspiration

E/PE: ratio of actual and

potential evapotranspiration --lower ratio mean water doesn’t enough to meet meet the plant transpiration potential, which means dry of the soil

PCA[3] and CABFAC[4]

multi-factors effect analysis

PCA[3] and CABFAC[4] multi-factors effect

analysisHuman activity

-- Anthropogenic pressure

2800-500 yr ago---heavy agriculture

Last 50 yrs----increase again

Agriculture replace the woodlands and change the river root to increase sea level

Summary

The forest replacement by thorny shrub-steppe and then by open-steppe due to the sea invasion around 4000-2900 yr ago.

I. Wash out of tree stand earth and seed since tree need more stable base to extend roots.

II. After the saltwater decrease, coast stimulate salt and this salt sands fit only to steppe

Drought event linked after sea invasion at 3200 yr ago

I. Decreased human force such as agriculture give plants recovery space

II. After drought event, agriculture levels has increased and replaced woodland (far from the sea)

Agriculture induce sea invasion again in last 50 yrs

I. Provided by the fresh water plant level will decrease as 3000 years ago after sea invasion

Future Focus

Human induced sea-level rise and drought even in

the next century will deeply impact the coastal

ecosystems

Other research show that the delay of winter coming

due to Global Warming increase fire risk in autumn [5]

Shorter winter and hotter temperature increase

disease amount plants [5]

Bibliography

[1] Watzman, Haim (8 February 1997). "Left for dead". New Scientist

(London). Retrieved 20 March 2012.

[2] Kaplan, J. O., Bigelow, N. H., Prentice, I. C., Harrison, S. P., Bartlein, P. J.,

Christensen, T. R., Cramer, W., Matveyeva, N. V., McGuire, A. D., Murray,

D. F., Razzhivin, V. Y., Smith, B., Walker, D. A., Anderson, P. M., Andreev, A.

A., Brubaker, L. B., Edwards, M. E., and Lozhkin, A. V. (2003 - in press).

Climate change and arctic ecosystems II: Modeling, paleodata-model

comparisons, and future projections. Journal of Geophysical Research.

[3] Davis, J.C. 1986. Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology. John Wiley &

Sons.

[4] David P. Adam. 1976 CABFAC/USGS, a FORTRAN program for Q-

mode factor analysis of stratigraphically ordered samples

[5] Guy Pe’er, Uriel N. Safriel. (Oct, 2000). Climate Change Israel National

Report. The Blaustein Institute for Desert Research Sede Boqer Campus of

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The BIOME4 model. Referenced from Kaplan, J. O.,

et, al. [2]