Overview
- BSIP researchers cored more than one metre of mud from the Sohola swamp and analysed pollen and dung‑linked fungal spores to reconstruct roughly 3,300 years of ecological change.
- The record tracks a shift from denser forests and deeper swamps to shallower wetlands with expanding open grasslands that favored grazing megaherbivores such as rhinos.
- During the late Holocene, including the Little Ice Age, climatic instability alongside habitat loss, overhunting and other human pressures drove rhino declines in northwestern and central India.
- Northeast India's relative climatic stability and lower disturbance maintained suitable refuges, concentrating rhinoceroses in Kaziranga.
- The peer‑reviewed study, published in Catena and highlighted by India’s Science Ministry, provides a long‑term baseline to inform habitat restoration and climate‑resilient conservation planning.