A millennium of climatic and floristic dynamics in the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes

The transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, 950-1250 CE) to the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1350 to 1800 CE) is the largest pre-industrial climate shift within the last two millennia, offering an opportunity to study how vegetation responds to rapid climate change. We analyzed a sedimentary record from the Colombian Andes to reconstruct regional vegetation dynamics during this time interval, identify the modern environmental distribution of taxa present in the fossil record, and provide a reference for modern regional temperature change. A sediment core was analyzed for organic geochemistry and pollen to reconstruct environmental and vegetation variability between 800 and 1800 CE. Modern occurrences of individuals of the genera found in the fossil record were used to model the distribution of taxa across gradients of mean annual temperature and precipitation. These models were used to reconstruct temperature and precipitation across time and evaluate the probability of occurrence of...