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Journal Article

Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India

Authors

Riedel,  Nils
External Organizations;

Fuller,  Dorian Q.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/Marwan

Marwan,  Norbert
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Poretschkin,  Constantin
External Organizations;

Basavaiah,  Nathani
External Organizations;

Menzel,  Philip
External Organizations;

Ratnam,  Jayashree
External Organizations;

Prasad,  Sushma
External Organizations;

Sachse,  Dirk
External Organizations;

Sankaran,  Mahesh
External Organizations;

Sarkar,  Saswati
External Organizations;

Stebich,  Martina
External Organizations;

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Fulltext (public)

25672oa.pdf
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Citation

Riedel, N., Fuller, D. Q., Marwan, N., Poretschkin, C., Basavaiah, N., Menzel, P., Ratnam, J., Prasad, S., Sachse, D., Sankaran, M., Sarkar, S., Stebich, M. (2021): Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India. - Scientific Reports, 11, 9032.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88550-8


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_25672
Abstract
An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anthropogenic-derived, degraded descendants of deciduous forests. Despite recent work showing that modern savannas in the subcontinent fall within established bioclimatic envelopes of extant savannas elsewhere, the debate persists, at least in part because the regions where savannas occur also have a long history of human presence and habitat modification. Here we show for the first time, using multiple proxies for vegetation, climate and disturbances from high-resolution, well-dated lake sediments from Lonar Crater in peninsular India, that neither anthropogenic impact nor fire regime shifts, but monsoon weakening during the past ~ 6.0 kyr cal. BP, drove the expansion of savanna at the expense of forests in peninsular India. Our results provide unambiguous evidence for a climate-induced origin and spread of the modern savannas of peninsular India at around the mid-Holocene. We further propose that this savannization preceded and drove the introduction of agriculture and development of sedentism in this region, rather than vice-versa as has often been assumed.