Islands are among the last regions on Earth settled and transformed by human activities, and they provide replicated model systems for analysis of how people affect ecological functions. By analyzing 27 representative fossil pollen sequences encompassing the past 5000 years from islands globally, we quantified the rates of vegetation compositional change before and after human arrival. After human arrival, rates of turnover accelerate by a median factor of 11, with faster rates on islands colonized in the past 1500 years than for those colonized earlier. This global anthropogenic acceleration in turnover suggests that islands are on trajectories of continuing change. Strategies for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration must acknowledge the long duration of human impacts and the degree to which ecological changes today differ from prehuman dynamics.

岛屿是人类活动在地球上定居和改造的最后区域之一，它们为分析人们如何影响生态功能提供了可复制的模型系统。通过分析全球各岛近5000年来的27个代表性化石花粉序列，我们量化了人类到达之前和之后植被组成的变化速率。人到后，周转率以中值系数11加速，与过去殖民地相比，过去1500年被殖民的岛屿的周转速度更快。全球人为营业额的加速增长表明岛屿​​正处于持续变化的轨道上。