Abstract
The remote and geologically young island of Mauritius developed a high biodiversity while for its geographical location Pleistocene climate must have experienced strong wet-dry alternations, causing dynamically changing ecosystems. Climate variability is driven by glacial/interglacial temperature change, precession-driven wet/dry changes (~10 kyr cycles), and superposed fast changes from millennial to El Niño time scales. In this project we reconstruct on the basis of 4 sediment cores the dynamics during the last 20 kyr of Mauritius? ecosystems (wet montane forest, raingreen forest, dry forest, savanna) and the dynamic abiotic coastal environment. We evaluate how the mosaic of volcanic landscapes and gallery forests along the drainage systems has fascilitated conservation of biodiversity during climatologically unfavourable periods, and the impact of the raising sea-level on terrestrial ecosystems. The possible role of the Indian Ocean hot water pool as a factor stabilizing environmental change will be addressed. Natural ecosystems became rapidly degraded after Europeans arrived in AD 1638; the dodo became extinct. The 4000 years old dodo graveyard will be placed in a long-range record of changing regional and local conditions and we expect to better understand the reasons why this exceptional concentration of dodo-skeletons were formed. We will make a baseline study of the natural setting just before human impact (pre-1600 AD) that serves as a blueprint for management and restoration. Remnants of riverine gallery forest are now the reservoirs of terrestrial biodiversity left and we will elaborate on the hypothesis that under natural conditions such forests allowed a dynamic respons on climate variability.
Netherlands