Essay
Version 2
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Rise and Fall of Caribbean Mangroves
Version 1
: Received: 20 January 2023 / Approved: 23 January 2023 / Online: 23 January 2023 (01:06:54 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 25 January 2023 / Approved: 26 January 2023 / Online: 26 January 2023 (04:03:48 CET)
Version 3 : Received: 21 March 2023 / Approved: 22 March 2023 / Online: 22 March 2023 (08:32:20 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 25 January 2023 / Approved: 26 January 2023 / Online: 26 January 2023 (04:03:48 CET)
Version 3 : Received: 21 March 2023 / Approved: 22 March 2023 / Online: 22 March 2023 (08:32:20 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Rull, V. Rise and Fall of Caribbean Mangroves. Science of The Total Environment 2023, 163851, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163851. Rull, V. Rise and Fall of Caribbean Mangroves. Science of The Total Environment 2023, 163851, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163851.
Abstract
Mangrove forests, which are essential for the maintenance of terrestrial and marine biodiversity in tropical coasts and constitute the main blue-carbon ecosystems for the mitigation of global warming, are among the world’s most threatened ecosystems. Mangrove conservation can greatly benefit from paleoecological and evolutionary studies, as past analogs documenting the responses of these ecosystems to environmental drivers such as climate change, sea level shifts and anthropogenic pressure. A database (CARMA) encompassing nearly all studies on mangroves from the Caribbean region, one of the main mangrove hotspots, and their response to past environmental shifts has recently been assembled and analyzed. The dataset contains over 140 sites and ranges from the Late Cretaceous to the present. The Caribbean was the cradle of Neotropical mangroves, where they emerged in the Middle Eocene (~50 million years ago; Ma). A major evolutionary turnover occurred in the Eocene/Oligocene transition (34 Ma) that set the bases for the shaping of modern-like mangroves. However, the diversification of these communities leading to their extant composition did not occur until the Pliocene (~5 Ma). The Pleistocene (the last 2.6 Ma) glacial-interglacial cycles caused spatial and compositional reorganizations with no further evolution. Human pressure on Caribbean mangroves increased in the Middle Holocene (~6000 years ago), when pre-Columbian societies began to clear these forests for cultivation. In the last decades, deforestation has reduced the Caribbean mangrove cover by one third and it has been estimated that, if urgent and effective conservation actions are not undertaken, these 50 million-year-old ecosystems might disappear in little more than half a century. A number of specific conservation and restoration applications based on the results of paleoecological and evolutionary studies are suggested.
Keywords
Caribbean; mangroves; evolution; paleoecology; climate; sea level; anthropization; conservation
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Paleontology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Commenter: Valenti Rull
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