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Recent assessments of Earth's dwindling wilderness have emphasized that Antarctica is a crucial wilderness in need of protection.sup.1,2. Yet human impacts on the continent are widespread.sup.3-5, the extent of its wilderness unquantified.sup.2 and the importance thereof for biodiversity conservation unknown. Here we assemble a comprehensive record of human activity (approximately 2.7 million records, spanning 200 years) and use it to quantify the extent of Antarctica's wilderness and its representation of biodiversity. We show that 99.6% of the continent's area can still be considered wilderness, but this area captures few biodiversity features. Pristine areas, free from human interference, cover a much smaller area (less than 32% of Antarctica) and are declining as human activity escalates.sup.6. Urgent expansion of Antarctica's network of specially protected areas.sup.7 can both reverse this trend and secure the continent's biodiversity.sup.8-10. Historical records reveal that although 99.6% of Antarctica is defined as wilderness, areas undisturbed by humans comprise less than 32%, largely in regions of low biodiversity., Author(s): Rachel I. Leihy [sup.1] , Bernard W. T. Coetzee [sup.2] [sup.3] , Fraser Morgan [sup.4] [sup.5] , Ben Raymond [sup.6] [sup.7] , Justine D. Shaw [sup.8] , Aleks Terauds [...]

Sediment cores spanning the last 10,000 yr from two lakes in the Sylvania Wilderness Area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were analyzed for pollen, and the pollen data were compared with the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) data set of modern pollen samples. The best modern analogue for the spruce pollen zone (>9000 BP) at the bottom of Glimmerglass Lake was a sample located near Hudson's Bay in Quebec. This zone was not present at Crooked Lake. Modern samples matched the samples from the diploxylon pollen zone (9000 to 8000 BP) poorly. Samples analogous to those from the haploxylon pollen zone (8000 to 3000 BP) come from eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Samples dating from after the arrival of Tsuga (at 3000 BP) are similar to modern surface samples from Sylvania. The surface sample analogues suggest that the arrival of Tsuga at 3000 BP marks the establishment of the modern 'lake effects' climatic regime in the Upper Peninsula., INTRODUCTION The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has been a major route for the expansion of tree species ranges into the Upper Midwest. Most notably, hemlock (Tsuga) expanded into the Upper [...]