2024/03/01 by Julian Rogger, Benjamin Mills, Taras Gerya +1 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.adj4408
openalex publication_date 2024/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Earth's long-term climate is driven by the cycling of carbon between geologic reservoirs and the atmosphere-ocean system. Our understanding of carbon-climate regulation remains incomplete, with large discrepancies remaining between biogeochemical model predictions and the geologic record. Here, we evaluate the importance of the continuous biological climate adaptation of vegetation as a regulation mechanism in the geologic carbon cycle since the establishment of forest ecosystems. Using a model, we show that the vegetation's speed of adaptation to temperature changes through eco-evolutionary processes can strongly influence global rates of organic carbon burial and silicate weathering. Considering a limited thermal adaptation capacity of the vegetation results in a closer balance of reconstructed carbon fluxes into and out of the atmosphere-ocean system, which is a prerequisite to maintain habitable conditions on Earth's surface on a multimillion-year timescale. We conclude that the long-term carbon-climate system is more sensitive to biological dynamics than previously expected, which may help to explain large shifts in Phanerozoic climate.