Abstract
For millennia, climate changes and Indigenous peoples have influenced Earth’s tropical and subtropical forests. Their relative importance affects our understanding of these ecosystems’ resilience to current anthropogenic changes, so is subject to intensive research and debate. South America’s Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot, has been largely absent from this conversation. Here we focus on one of this region’s most iconic, ancient and threatened formations—southern Brazil’s highland mosaic of Araucaria Forest and Campos grasslands. Using novel integrations of palaeo-data and ecological modelling, we assess how climatic and human drivers shaped these landscapes, often through changes to fire dynamics, over the last 6,000 years. We show that climate changes made significant contributions to Araucaria Forest expansions over the last several thousand years, driven by non-linear responses of fire-forest feedback loops to minor climatic shifts. However, within Araucaria Forest areas that experienced more intense human use and occupation, Indigenous people cultivated crops, modified fire dynamics, and profoundly affected vegetation structure and composition. Our results challenge binary views of climate- versus human-driven past vegetation change. Climate, humans and fire all shaped these landscapes through space and time in complex and interacting ways, all of which must be considered to understand or effectively conserve them.
Data availability
Synthesised palaeoecological proxy data and all modelling results are available in the supplementary information. New palaeoecological proxy data will be publicly archived upon publication.
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Acknowledgements
Locations of southern Jê archaeological sites were kindly provided by Jonas G. de Souza (JGdS). This study made use of the University of Reading Academic Computing Cloud. OJW thanks Philip Riris for help with the palaeoclimate variability analysis and M. Jane Bunting for logistical support while undertaking this research. This study was funded by an AHRC-FAPESP research grant, ‘Je Landscapes of southern Brazil: Ecology, History and Power in a transitional landscape during the Late Holocene’ (AH/K004212/1) to JI and FEM, with MLC as appointed PDRA. FEM and JI thank JGdS for assistance with fieldwork and collection of the Abreu e Garcia and Amaral cores. CL acknowledges funding from ANID FB210006 to the IEB. OJW was supported by a University of Reading Graduate Teaching Assistant PhD studentship and a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (NE/X001660/1) at the University of York. CAD was supported by a NERC SCENARIO DTP award at the University of Reading. For the purposes of open access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any author accepted manuscript version arising.
Funding
This study was funded by an AHRC-FAPESP research grant, ‘Je Landscapes of southern Brazil: Ecology, History and Power in a transitional landscape during the Late Holocene’ (AH/K004212/1) to JI and FEM, with MLC as appointed PDRA. CL acknowledges funding from ANID FB210006 to the IEB. OJW was supported by a University of Reading Graduate Teaching Assistant PhD studentship and a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (NE/X001660/1) at the University of York. CAD was supported by a NERC SCENARIO DTP award at the University of Reading.
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The overall aim of the study was conceived by FEM and OJW. The project design and methodological approach was devised by OJW. OJW undertook the ENM development, palaeoclimate analysis, and syntheses of palaeoecological and archaeological data. HB provided raw data for a number of palaeoecological records. FEM and JI collected the study’s new sediment cores which were prepared and analysed for palaeo-proxies by MLC (pollen, charcoal) and CL (stable isotopes). OJW and FEM interpreted the results with MLC. OJW drafted the manuscript, which all authors reviewed before submission.
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Wilson, O.J., Cárdenas, M.L., Latorre, C. et al. How climate, Indigenous people, and fire shaped Brazil’s Araucaria Forests through the Late Holocene.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-41607-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-41607-y
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