#PleistocenePark: "The current mixture of Yakutian horses, bison, musk oxen, elk, reindeer, sheep, yak & Kalmyk cattle have helped grasslands re-emerge. Average annual soil temperatures are 2°C cooler in grazed areas. More carbon is being sequestered" economist.com/christmas-spec…
More from Zimov: "mammalian grazers [..] extinction could have contributed substantially to the shift from predominance of steppe to tundra [..] Our hypothesis suggests a mechanism by which the steppe ecosystem could be restored" semanticscholar.org/paper/Steppe-T…
And this, still from Zimov: "For the late Pleistocene, the largest methane source was megaherbivores, whose total biomass is estimated to have exceeded that of present-day humans and domestic animals." journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
With all the talk about massive reforestation & grand half-Earth schemes, in as wish to restore Nature (capital N), it is good to have this in mind:
"In the Pleistocene, grassland ecosystems occupied about half of the world's land mass"
science.sciencemag.org/content/308/57…
"In the Pleistocene, grassland ecosystems occupied about half of the world's land mass"
science.sciencemag.org/content/308/57…
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