Max Planck Society
New research led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, shows that disruptions to Indigenous land management following Iberian colonization did not always result in widespread forest regrowth in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, as has been recently argued.
A new study, published now in Nature Ecology and Evolution, draws on pollen records from tropical regions formerly claimed by the Spanish Empire in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, to test the significance and extent of forest regrowth following widespread mortality among Indigenous populations after European contact in the 15
th and 16
th centuries. By analyzing microscopic pollen grains preserved in lake sediments, scientists are able to build up a picture as to how environments have changed over time.