Modern pollen–vegetation relationships in subarctic southern Greenland and the interpretation of fossil pollen data from the Norse<i>landnám</i>

Schofield, J. Edward; Edwards, Kevin J.; McMullen, J. Andy

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01607.x

Cited by 67 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Ordination techniques have been widely used for analyzing relationships among pollen taxa, vegetation data and environmental variables (Schofield et al 2007;Zhao et al 2007;Zhao and Herzschuh 2009;Zhang et al 2010). A detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) was initially performed to estimate the underlying linearity of the data.…”

Section: Numerical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface pollen and its relationships with modern vegetation and climate in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China

Wei

Zhao

2015

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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A dataset consisting of 70 surface pollen samples from forest, alpine meadow, alpine steppe, temperate steppe, desert steppe, shrub/semi-shrub steppe and desert sites in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China provides an opportunity to study the relationships between surface pollen assemblages and modern vegetation and climate in this region. Redundancy analysis (RDA), the human influence index (HII) and pollen ratios were used to facilitate analysis of the pollen data. The modern pollen assemblages are primarily composed of Picea, Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae, Poaceae, Asteraceae, Nitraria and Ephedra. The results suggest that the surface pollen assemblages of different vegetation types largely represent the modern vegetation in terms of the primary taxa and dominant types. The RDA indicates that the mean annual precipitation (MAP) and the July temperature (T July ) are the major climate variables that control the modern pollen assemblages. Picea, Artemisia, Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Fabaceae, Asteraceae, Polygonaceae and Apiaceae pollen assemblages are positively correlated with MAP and negatively correlated with T July , while the pollen ratios for certain other types, such as Chenopodiaceae, Ephedra and Nitraria, are negatively correlated with MAP and positively correlated with T July . The arboreal/non-arboreal ratios are notably high in the forest samples, indicating a sensitive response to forest vegetation. Moreover, the Artemisia/Chenopodiaceae pollen ratios are generally correlated with the vegetation type and annual precipitation change, suggesting that these factors could be useful indicators of moisture variability in arid regions. However, it is difficult to distinguish between steppe and steppe desert based on this ratio, due partly to human disturbance. The HII is significantly correlated with certain pollen taxa, including Poaceae, Plantago, Polygonaceae and Elaeagnaceae, particularly in the alpine meadow and steppe samples. Our results have implications for interpreting the available fossil pollen data in the study region and other arid and semi-arid regions.

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Section: Numerical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface pollen and its relationships with modern vegetation and climate in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China

Wei

Zhao

2015

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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“…Davis, 1984;Hjelle, 1997;Bunting, 2003;Schofield et al, 2007). This approach is suitable where the pollen representation of ecologically diagnostic taxa is low and in situations where the source area is likely to be small .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling the pollen signal from fen systems: Modern and Holocene studies from southern and eastern England

Waller

Carvalho

Grant

et al. 2017

Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology

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Thick deposits of peat derived from fen environments accumulated in the coastal lowland areas adjacent to the North Sea during the middle and late Holocene. These sediments are frequently used in pollen-based reconstructions of in situ and more distant vegetation. However, discriminating between wetland and dry land originating pollen signals, and between the potential fen communities present in the wetland, is complex. In this study, a suite of analytical approaches are used to explore the pollen signal of modern fen communities and compare them against Holocene pollen assemblages. At two sites in eastern England, Woodwalton Fen and Upton Broad, vegetation composition was recorded around a series of moss polster sampling points. The communities investigated included herbaceous fen communities under different cutting regimes, a grazed area, glades, and woodland with canopies dominated by Alnus glutinosa and Betula. Cluster analysis is used to provide an overview of, and compare the structure within, the datasets consisting of the vegetation, the vegetation converted to palynological equivalents, and the pollen data. It is demonstrated that any loss of taxonomic precision in pollen identifications does not pose particular problems when attempting to identify fen communities, including tall-herbaceous vegetation, in the pollen record. Indices of Association imply pollen presence can be interpreted as indicating the local presence for some taxa, though few of these are confined to a particular community. Herbaceous fen vegetation subject to different management regimes are, however, shown to produce distinctive pollen signatures. Middle and late Holocene pollen assemblages from eastern (Fenland) and southern (Romney Marsh) England, interpreted as derived from fen vegetation, are compared against the modern pollen dataset using ordination. Most of the fossil samples plot out within or adjacent to the groupings produced by the modern samples in the ordinations. While these investigations demonstrate that modern pollen work can help improve the interpretation of Holocene assemblages they also call attention to a number of limitations including the restricted range of communities from which modern samples are currently available and the potential for non-analogous modern vegetation. The paper concludes with ideas to aid the interpretation of pollen data collected from fen peats and suggestions for future work.

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“…Following woodland loss at site B, Poaceae pollen percentages increase and several indicators of human activity are recorded (HBB-1b), including pollen of taxa that are often associated with pasture and grazing activity (Behre 1981) Similar suites of pollen taxa have been found to be indicative of local grazing pressure in surface sample studies in a range of habitats similar to those hypothesised to have been present in prehistoric Orkney (e.g. Gaillard et al 1992Gaillard et al , 1994Hjelle 1998Hjelle , 1999Schofield 2007), and these taxa are often interpreted as pastoral indicators in the North Atlantic islands (e.g. Keatinge and Dickson 1979;Edwards and Whittington 1998;Vickers et al, 2005;de la Vega-Leinert et al 2007Lawson et al 2008).…”

Section: Reconstruction Of Holocene Environments At Hobbistermentioning

confidence: 94%

Later prehistoric vegetation dynamics and Bronze Age agriculture at Hobbister, Orkney, Scotland

Farrell

2014

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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Later prehistoric vegetation dynamics and Bronze Age agriculture at Hobbister, Orkney, Scotland Farrell, M. (2015 AbstractThe Bronze Age in Britain was a time of major social and cultural changes, reflected in the division of the landscape into field systems and the establishment of new belief systems and ritual practices. Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain these changes, and assessment of many of them is dependent on the availability of detailed palaeoenvironmental data from the sites concerned. This paper explores the development of a later prehistoric landscape in Orkney, where a Bronze Age field system and an apparently ritually-deposited late Bronze Age axehead are located in an area of deep blanket peat from which highresolution palaeoenvironmental sequences have been recovered. There is no indication that the field system was constructed to facilitate agricultural intensification, and it more likely reflects a cultural response to social fragmentation associated with a more dispersed settlement pattern. There is evidence for wetter conditions during the later Bronze Age, and the apparent votive deposit may reflect the efforts of the local population to maintain community integrity during a time of perceptible environmental change leading to loss of farmland. The study emphasises the advantages of close integration of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data for interpretation of prehistoric human activity. The palaeoenvironmental data also provide further evidence for the complexity of prehistoric woodland communities in Orkney, hinting at greater diversity than is often assumed.Additionally, differing dates for woodland decline in the two sequences highlight the dangers of over-extrapolation from trends observed in a single pollen profile, even at a very local scale.

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Modern pollen–vegetation relationships in subarctic southern Greenland and the interpretation of fossil pollen data from the Norselandnám

Cited by 67 publications

References 28 publications

Surface pollen and its relationships with modern vegetation and climate in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China

Surface pollen and its relationships with modern vegetation and climate in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China

Disentangling the pollen signal from fen systems: Modern and Holocene studies from southern and eastern England

Later prehistoric vegetation dynamics and Bronze Age agriculture at Hobbister, Orkney, Scotland

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