Contribution of the Order Ericales to Improving Paleoclimate Reconstructions

Gang Wei, Changhui Peng, Qiuan Zhu, Xiaolu Zhou and Weiguo Liu
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Gang Wei: College of Science, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China
Changhui Peng: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China
Qiuan Zhu: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China
Xiaolu Zhou: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China
Weiguo Liu: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang 712100, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: Paleobotanists have long built leaf climate models based on site mean of leaf physiognomic characteristics of woody dicotyledons species (WDS) for estimating past climate. To explore the potential of the order Ericales in estimating paleoclimate, we developed two linear models for each climatic factor. One is based on WDS, and the other is based on both WDS and leaf physiognomic characters of the order Ericales (WDS-E). We found that, compared with WDS models, WDS-E models improved greatly in mean annual precipitation (MAP), growing season precipitation (GSP) and mean annual range in temperature (MART). When the minimum species number of the order Ericales is three per site, the WDS-E models improved the r 2 from 0.64 to 0.78 for MART, from 0.23 to 0.61 for ln(MAP), and from 0.37 to 0.64 for ln(GSP) compared with the WDS models. For mean annual temperature (MAT), the WDS-E model ( r 2 = 0.86) also exhibited a moderate improvement in precision over the WDS model ( r 2 = 0.82). This study demonstrates that other patterns, such as those of the order Ericales, can contribute additional information towards building more precise paleoclimate models.

Keywords: leaf physiognomy; paleoclimate; precipitation; temperature; Ericales (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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