Intensive land use reduced global vegetation stability over the past two millennia

The stability of vegetation regimes—the temporal persistence of plant assemblages—has fluctuated markedly since the last deglaciation. While climate is the primary driver of long-term vegetation dynamics, the effects of human land use change remain less clear. Here, we analyze global vegetation regime stability over the past 15,000 years using fossil pollen records and assess the impacts of land use type and intensification. Vegetation stability declined during the climatically variable deglaciation, increased in the early to middle Holocene when climate variability dropped, but declined sharply over the past 2000 years despite no increase in climate variability, with continent-specific differences in timing. Intensive agriculture and urbanism had the strongest negative effects on vegetation stability, followed by extensive agriculture and pastoralism, whereas foraging, hunting, gathering, and fishing had minimal impact. These findings suggest that recent declines in vegetation stability are linked to intensified human land use, highlighting the need to conserve natural land less intensively managed ecosystems.