Course work for introducing for selected reading paper in topic of biological science

1. Israel Coast
Mediterranean
Ecosystems in Long-
Term changes
Presenter: Minyi Chen
Reference Paper author: David Kaniewski,
Elise Van Campo,et.al.

2. Israel Akko
Study
 By the eastern end
of
the Mediterranean
Sea at longitudes
34°and 36°E
 Typical
Mediterranean
climate with cool,
rainy winters and
long, hot, dry
summers.

3. Method: Arboreal Pollen (AP)
 Pollen deviation from
the mean population
size (by “subtract mean”
method)
 Mean population size:
the total amount of
pollen collected from
different layers, divided
by # of layers

4. Method
 Pollen-derived clusters (Pd Clusters) both modern and fossil record of
different plants pollen --- made phylogenetic tree by neighbor joining
to show the ecosystem distribution and how they change in the coast
of Israel
 PCA[3] (Principal component analysis) and CABFAC[4] (Calgary-Brown
Factor Analysis) multi-factors effect analysis which factor impact eco-
change the most.[3]
 The BIOME4 [2] based comparison of pollen concentration—vegetation
model shows how plants were changing with climate and effected by
multi-factors—specifically precipitation.

5. Result:
Phylogenetic tree
Neighbor Joining analysis group 74
taxa into 9 categories
 Wet woodland
 Open forest
 Scrubs
 Dry steppe
 Phrygana-batha
 Cultivated species and weeds
 Dry shrub land
 Wet steppe
 Fen trees
 Open forest
 Wet woodland

6. Modern pollen
distribution
----wood/ wetland plants
 Cultivated species
 weeds
 Open forest
 Fen trees
 Wet woodland
 Wet steppe
Open steppe shrubland
Close sea far from
sea

7. Modern pollen
distribution
---- dryland shrub/grass
 Dry shrubland
 Phrygana-batha
 Scrubs
 Dry steppe
Close sea Far from
sea
Open steppe shrubland

8.  P-E: annual precipitation
minus evapotranspiration-
evapotranspiration--high
high value = too much
water for
evapotranspiration
 E/PE: ratio of actual and
potential
evapotranspiration --
lower ratio mean water
doesn’t enough to meet
meet the plant
transpiration potential,
which means dry of the
soil
PCA[3] and CABFAC[4]
multi-factors effect
analysis

9. PCA[3] and CABFAC[4] multi-factors effect
analysis
Human activity
-- Anthropogenic
pressure
 2800-500 yr ago---
heavy agriculture
 Last 50 yrs----
increase again
 Agriculture replace
the woodlands
and change the
river root to
increase sea level

10. Summary
 The forest replacement by thorny shrub-steppe and
then by open-steppe due to the sea invasion around
4000-2900 yr ago.
I. Wash out of tree stand earth and seed since tree need more stable base
to extend roots.
II. After the saltwater decrease, coast stimulate salt and this salt sands fit only
to steppe
 Drought event linked after sea invasion at 3200 yr ago
I. Decreased human force such as agriculture give plants recovery space
II. After drought event, agriculture levels has increased and replaced
woodland (far from the sea)
 Agriculture induce sea invasion again in last 50 yrs
I. Provided by the fresh water plant level will decrease as 3000 years ago

11. Future Focus
 Human induced sea-level rise and drought even in
the next century will deeply impact the coastal
ecosystems
 Other research show that the delay of winter coming
due to Global Warming increase fire risk in autumn [5]
 Shorter winter and hotter temperature increase
disease amount plants [5]

12. Bibliography
 [1] Watzman, Haim (8 February 1997). "Left for dead". New Scientist
(London). Retrieved 20 March 2012.
 [2] Kaplan, J. O., Bigelow, N. H., Prentice, I. C., Harrison, S. P., Bartlein, P. J.,
Christensen, T. R., Cramer, W., Matveyeva, N. V., McGuire, A. D., Murray,
D. F., Razzhivin, V. Y., Smith, B., Walker, D. A., Anderson, P. M., Andreev, A.
A., Brubaker, L. B., Edwards, M. E., and Lozhkin, A. V. (2003 - in press).
Climate change and arctic ecosystems II: Modeling, paleodata-model
comparisons, and future projections. Journal of Geophysical Research.
 [3] Davis, J.C. 1986. Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology. John Wiley &
Sons.
 [4] David P. Adam. 1976 CABFAC/USGS, a FORTRAN program for Q-
mode factor analysis of stratigraphically ordered samples
 [5] Guy Pe’er, Uriel N. Safriel. (Oct, 2000). Climate Change Israel National
Report. The Blaustein Institute for Desert Research Sede Boqer Campus of
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

13. The BIOME4 model. Referenced from Kaplan, J. O.,
et, al. [2]