![]() “We found that during the short events such as the Black Death and the Ming Dynasty collapse, the forest re-growth wasn’t enough to overcome the emissions from decaying material in the soil,” explains Pongratz. She kept her eye on four historical events closely, which she theorized could have impacted the climate due to the return of forests after depopulation: the Black Death in Europe (the end of the 14th Century), the fall of China’s Ming Dynasty (the last half of the 17th Century), the conquest of the Americas (the 16th and 17th Centuries), and the Mongol invasion of the 13th and 14th Century. In the study published in The Holocene, Pongratz along with Carnegie colleague, Ken Caldeira, and German colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, compiled a model of global land cover beginning in 800 AD. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. The answer to how this happened can be told in one word: reforestation. “Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth‘s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture.” “It’s a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era,” says Pongratz, lead author of the study in a press release. Genghis Khan and his empire, which lasted nearly two centuries, actually cooled the Earth. But aside from creating the world’s largest empire, the Mongol invasion had another global impact that has remained hidden in history according to new research by Julia Pongratz of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. In 1206 AD Genghis Khan began the Mongol invasion: a horse-crazed bow-wielding military force that swept through much of modern-day Asia into the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Genghis Khan and his empire, which lasted nearly two centuries, actually cooled the Earth.But aside from creating the world’s largest empire, the Mongol invasion had another global impact that has remained hidden in history according to new research by Julia Pongratz of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.In 1206 AD Genghis Khan began the Mongol invasion: a horse-crazed bow-wielding military force that swept through much of modern-day Asia into the Middle East and Eastern Europe. ![]()
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