Articles | Volume 21, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-2031-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-2031-2025
Research article
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06 Nov 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 06 Nov 2025

Holocene land cover change in North America: continental trends, regional drivers, and implications for vegetation–atmosphere feedbacks

Andria Dawson, John W. Williams, Marie-José Gaillard, Simon J. Goring, Behnaz Pirzamanbein, Johan Lindstrom, R. Scott Anderson, Andrea Brunelle, David Foster, Konrad Gajewski, Daniel G. Gavin, Terri Lacourse, Thomas A. Minckley, Wyatt Oswald, Bryan Shuman, and Cathy Whitlock

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Cited articles

Abraham, V., Oušková, V., and Kuneš, P.: Present-day vegetation helps quantifying past land cover in selected regions of the Czech Republic, PLoS One, 9, e100117, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100117, 2014. 
Alder, J. R. and Hostetler, S. W.: Global climate simulations at 3000-year intervals for the last 21 000 years with the GENMOM coupled atmosphere–ocean model, Clim. Past, 11, 449–471, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-449-2015, 2015. 
Alessandri, A., Catalano, F., De Felice, M., Van den Hurk, B., and Balsamo, G.: Varying snow and vegetation signatures of surface-albedo feedback on the Northern Hemisphere land warming, Environ. Res. Lett., 16, 034023, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd65f, 2021. 
Allison, T. D., Moeller, R. E., and Davis, M. B.: Pollen in laminated sediments provides evidence of mid-Holocene forest pathogen outbreak, Ecology, 67, 1101–1105, https://doi.org/10.2307/1939835, 1986. 
Alt, M., McWethy, D. B., Everett, R., and Whitlock, C.: Millennial scale climate-fire-vegetation interactions in a mid-elevation mixed coniferous forest, Mission Range, northwestern Montana, USA, Quaternary Res., 90, 66–82, https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2018.25, 2018. 
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Editorial statement
The paper presents a state-of-the-are Holocene reconstruction of North American vegetation shifts, including a discussion of drivers and potential feedbacks on climate.
Short summary
Holocene vegetation–atmosphere interactions provide insight into intensifying land use impacts and the Holocene Conundrum: a mismatch between data- and model-inferred temperature. Using pollen records and statistical modeling, we reconstruct Holocene land cover for North America. We determine patterns and magnitudes of land cover changes across scales. We attribute land cover changes to ecological, climatic, and human drivers. These reconstructions provide benchmarks for Earth system models.
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