Records of vegetation in time and space: the principles of pollen analysis

Prentice, Colin

doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3081-0_2

Cited by 192 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Tauber (1967) argued that the pollen carried to the lake through the trunk space is a significant component of the total pollen deposited at the site. However, this trunk space component is not considered in the dispersal models used here (Prentice 1985(Prentice , 1988Sugita 1993Sugita , 1994. In the present study, we omitted 10 lakes from the analysis that were situated in closed-canopy forest dominated by Fagus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the effect of flowering age and forest structure on pollen productivity estimates

Matthias

Nielsen

Giesecke

2012

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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Pollen productivity estimates (PPEs) are indispensable prerequisites for quantitative vegetation reconstructions. Estimates from different European regions show a large variability and it is uncertain whether this reflects regional differences in climate and soil or is brought about by different assessments of vegetation abundance. Forests represent a particular problem as they consist of several layers of vegetation and many tree species only start producing pollen after they have attained ages of several decades. Here we used detailed forest inventory data from north-eastern Germany to investigate the effect of flowering age and understory trees on PPEs. Pollen counts were obtained from 49 small to medium sized lakes chosen to represent the different forest types in the region. Surface samples from lakes within a closed forest of Fagus yielded disproportionate amounts of Fagus pollen, increasing its PPE and the variability of all other estimates. These samples were removed from further analysis but indicate a high trunk-space component that is not considered in the Prentice-Sugita pollen dispersal and deposition model. Results of the restricted dataset show important differences in PPEs based on the consideration of flowering age and understory position. The effect is largest for slow growing and/or late flowering trees like Fagus and Carpinus while it is minimal for species that flower early in their development like Betula and Alnus. The large relevant source area of pollen (RSAP) of 7 km obtained in this study is consistent with the landscape structure of the region.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the effect of flowering age and forest structure on pollen productivity estimates

Matthias

Nielsen

Giesecke

2012

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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“…Today only few forests remain in the Soppensee area, so that not sufficient surface pollen data are available to calibrate sophisticated pollen dispersal models, e.g. those of Sugita (1994) or Prentice (1988), which probably would yield more reliable abundance estimates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untangling a Holocene pollen record with forest model simulations and independent climate data

Lischke¹,

Lotter

Fischlin³

2002

Ecological Modelling

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Adaptation potential of forests to rapid climatic changes can be assessed from vegetation dynamics during past climatic changes as preserved in fossil pollen data. However, pollen data reflect the integrated effects of climate and biotic processes, such as establishment, survival, competition, and migration. To disentangle these processes, we compared an annually laminated late Wü rm and Holocene pollen record from the Central Swiss Plateau with simulations of a dynamic forest patch model. All input data used in the simulations were largely independent from pollen data; i.e. the presented analysis is non-circular. Temperature and precipitation scenarios were based on reconstructions from pollen-independent sources. The earliest arrival times of the species at the study site after the last glacial were inferred from pollen maps. We ran a series of simulations under different combinations of climate and immigration scenarios. In addition, the sensitivity of the simulated presence/absence of four major species to changes in the climate scenario was examined. The pattern of the pollen record could partly be explained by the used climate scenario, mostly by temperature. However, some features, in particular the absence of most species during the late Wü rm could only be simulated if the winter temperature anomalies of the used scenario were decreased considerably. Consequently, we had to assume in the simulations, that most species immigrated during or after the Younger Dryas (12 000 years BP), Abies and Fagus even later. Given the timing of tree species immigration, the vegetation was in equilibrium with climate during long periods, but responded with lags at the time-scale of centuries to millennia caused by a secondary succession after rapid climatic changes such as at the end of Younger Dryas, or immigration of dominant taxa. Climate influenced the tree taxa both directly and indirectly by changing inter-specific competition. We concluded, that also during the present fast climatic change, species migration might be an important process, particularly if geographic barriers, such as the Alps are in the migrational path.

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“…Therefore, we set Z max at 200 km, i.e. the value of the ''characteristic radius'' sensu Prentice (1988) calculated for large lakes and 24 plant taxa in southern Sweden by Hellman et al (2008b) and defined as the distance from which C90 % of the pollen from all 24 taxa are coming.…”

Section: Regional Vegetation Reconstruction: the Reveals Model And Itmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are pollen records from small sites appropriate for REVEALS model-based quantitative reconstructions of past regional vegetation? An empirical test in southern Sweden

Trondman

Gaillard

Sugita

et al. 2015

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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In this paper we test the performance of the Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites (REVEALS) model using pollen records from multiple small sites. We use Holocene pollen records from large and small sites in southern Sweden to identify what is/are the most significant variable(s) affecting the REVEALS-based reconstructions, i.e. type of site (lakes and/or bogs), number of sites, site size, site location in relation to vegetation zones, and/or distance between small sites and large sites. To achieve this objective we grouped the small sites according to (i) the two major modern vegetation zones of the study region, and (ii) the distance between the small sites and large lakes, i.e. small sites within 50, 100, 150, or 200 km of the large lakes. The REVEALS-based reconstructions were performed using 24 pollen taxa. Redundancy analysis was performed on the results from all REVEALS-model runs using the groups within (i) and (ii) separately, and on the results from all runs using the groups within (ii) together. The explanatory power and significance of the variables were identified using forward selection and Monte Carlo permutation tests. The results show that (a) although the REVEALS model was designed for pollen data from large lakes, it also performs well with pollen data from multiple small sites in reconstructing the percentage cover of groups of plant taxa (e.g. open land taxa, summer-green trees, evergreen trees) or individual plant taxa; however, in the case of this study area, the reconstruction of the percentage cover of Calluna vulgaris, Cyperaceae, and Betula may be problematic when using small bogs; (b) standard errors of multiple small-site REVEALS estimates will generally be larger than those obtained using pollen records from large lakes, and they will decrease with increasing size of pollen counts and increasing number of small sites; (c) small lakes are better to use than small bogs if the total number of small sites is low; and (d) the size of small sites and the distance between them do not play a major role, but the distance between the small sites and landscape/vegetation boundaries is a determinant factor for the accuracy of the vegetation reconstructions.

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Records of vegetation in time and space: the principles of pollen analysis

Cited by 192 publications

References 59 publications

Evaluating the effect of flowering age and forest structure on pollen productivity estimates

Evaluating the effect of flowering age and forest structure on pollen productivity estimates

Untangling a Holocene pollen record with forest model simulations and independent climate data

Are pollen records from small sites appropriate for REVEALS model-based quantitative reconstructions of past regional vegetation? An empirical test in southern Sweden

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