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A long-term decrease in the persistence of soil carbon caused by ancient Maya land use

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 645–649 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The long-term effects of deforestation on tropical forest soil carbon reservoirs are important for estimating the consequences of land use on the global carbon cycle, but are poorly understood. The Maya Lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala provide a unique opportunity to assess this question, given the widespread deforestation by the ancient Maya that began ~4,000 years ago. Here, we compare radiocarbon ages of plant waxes and macrofossils in sediment cores from three lakes in the Maya Lowlands to record past changes in the mean soil transit time of plant waxes (MTTwax). MTTwax indicates the average age of plant waxes that are transported from soils to lake sediments, and comparison of radiocarbon data from soils and lake sediments within the same catchment indicates that MTTwax reflects the age of carbon in deep soils. All three sediment cores showed a decrease in MTTwax, ranging from 2,300 to 800 years, over the past 3,500 years. This decrease in MTTwax, indicating shorter storage times for carbon in lake catchment soils, is associated with evidence for ancient Maya deforestation. MTTwax never recovered to pre-deforestation values, despite subsequent reforestation, implying that current tropical deforestation will have long-lasting effects on soil carbon sinks.

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Fig. 1: Relief map of the Maya Lowlands indicating the location of the studied lakes.
Fig. 2: Plant wax and bulk SOC radiocarbon results from soils and surficial sediments in the Lake Chichancanab catchment.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4: Comparison of MTTwax data from the Maya Lowlands with three other globally distributed Holocene-age records.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to M. Pagani. We thank A. McNichol and L. Xu for facilitating many of the compound-specific radiocarbon measurements. Funding for this work was provided, in part, by a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to P.M.J.D.) and by a grant from the Italian Ministry of the Environment (to M.P.).

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  1. Deceased: Mark Pagani.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Peter M. J. Douglas & Mark Pagani

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Peter M. J. Douglas

  3. Geological Institute, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Timothy I. Eglinton

  4. Department of Geological Sciences and Land Use and Environmental Change Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Mark Brenner & Jason H. Curtis

  5. Natural Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin–Superior, Superior, WI, USA

    Andy Breckenridge

  6. Independent Scholar, Columbus, OH, USA

    Kevin Johnston

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Contributions

P.M.J.D. and M.P. designed the study. M.B., J.H.C., A.B. and K.J. collected, described and sampled the sediment cores. M.P. collected the soil samples. P.M.J.D. performed the geochemical analyses, under the guidance of T.I.E. and M.P. P.M.J.D. analysed the data and wrote the manuscript, with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Peter M. J. Douglas.

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Douglas, P.M.J., Pagani, M., Eglinton, T.I. et al. A long-term decrease in the persistence of soil carbon caused by ancient Maya land use. Nature Geosci 11, 645–649 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0192-7

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