Unraveling the interactions among herbivory, vegetation structure and climate

Humans affect mammal diversity and density, and vegetation drives global climate.

Although not previously properly investigated, these two processes share the fundamental intermediate link that mammals may control vegetation patterns.

Here, we will integrate these processes and combine mechanistic vegetation models with data on herbivory and mammalian communities through time and space.

We hypothesize that anthropogenic reductions in mammals altered global vegetation patterns by minimizing the top-down control that mammals have on vegetation structure and that these changes, in turn, have transformed the global climate.

We will estimate climatic feedback of mammalian extinctions and range contractions, as well as the potential climatic consequences of a partial restoration of mammalian communities, i.e. rewilding. Our results will be vital to understand natural climatic conditions and vegetation patterns. Our work will also determine the climatic consequences of restoring mammalian communities of extant species.

Our work will provide both basic scientific importance as well as deliverables with direct applications.

In particular, our results can be used to identify geographic areas where the restoration of large mammals will both have substantial conservation and climate change mitigation benefits.