Past, Present, and Future Climate Change: Can Palaeoecology Help Manage a Warming World? - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 93

Ice

a) Modern conditions

Modern

Grassland

Shrubs and grass

Lake

Andean
forest

b) Classic projection of
warming response

Shrubs
and grass

Forest and Polylepis
woodlands expand
upslope

Lake

Andean
forest

c) MIS 9, 5e and future

Grassland

Lake evaporates
and lake effect
is reduced

Lake

Saltmarsh

Andean
forest

Figure 5.5 Schematic diagram showing vegetation surrounding Lake Titicaca: (a) the modern system,
(b) a hypothetical migration response due to warming assuming that species would migrate upslope,
and (c) the outcome of warming in prior interglacials (MIS 5e and 9) in which forest did not migrate to fill
the basin, but the ecosystem dried out to become a salt marsh (Bush et al. 2010). Reproduced with per-
mission from John Wiley & Sons.

A prolonged dry period could exceed adaptive capacity, but farmers on the Altiplano have
traditionally used adaptive management to withstand shorter periods of drought, adjusting
the timing and planting of crops in response to changing conditions each growing season.
Traditionally, clues from nature have been used to forecast drought years; for example, the
timing of plant flowering, and observations of the stars have been used to decide whether to