The origin of grasslands in the temperate forest zone of east-central Europe: long-term legacy of climate and human impact

Abstract

The post-glacial fate of central European grasslands has stimulated palaeoecological debates for a century. Some argued for the continuous survival of open land, while others claimed that closed forest had developed during the Middle Holocene. The reasons behind stability or changes in the proportion of open land are also unclear. We aim to reconstruct regional vegetation openness and test the effects of climate and human impact on vegetation change throughout the Holocene. We present a newly dated pollen record from north-western fringes of the Pannonian Plain, east-central Europe, and reconstruct Holocene regional vegetation development by the REVEALS model for 27 pollen-equivalent taxa. Estimated vegetation is correlated in the same area with a human activity model based on all available archaeological information and a macrophysical climate model. The palaeovegetation record indicates the continuous presence of open land throughout the Holocene. Grasslands and open woodlands were probably maintained by local arid climatic conditions during the early Holocene delaying the spread of deciduous (oak) forests. Significantly detectable human-made landscape transformation started only after 2000 BC. Our analyses suggest that Neolithic people spread into a landscape that was already open. Humans probably contributed to the spread of oak, and influenced the dynamics of hazel and hornbeam.

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

“…Comparisons of HYDE with REVEALS reconstructions that include the heather (HL) fractions do not match as well (slope of 0.828; Figure S2), and we omitted HL from our primary analysis. Though heathlands can develop due to anthropogenic influences such as grazing and fire, many are natural and do not result from human activities [53,54,63]. This evaluation of the REVEALS method provides confidence that the REVEALS reconstructions are suitable for the evaluation of KK10 and HYDE scenarios for preindustrial time.…”

Vegetation dynamics and fire history at the southern boundary of the forest vegetation zone in European Russia during the middle and late Holocene

“…The proportion of cultivated cereals in pollen assemblages of the last hundred years reached 7%, demonstrating the presence of arable lands adjacent to the peatland (Koff and Punning, 2002 Saarse et al, 2010;Bradley et al, 2013;Kunes et al, 2015). In the central part of…”

“…Fire, livestock grazing and agriculture have been detected during the late Holocene in a number of studies (Behre 1981;Kalis et al, 2003;Bradley et al, 2013;Kunes et al, 2015) and are suggested to have had a substantial impact on vegetation (Feurdean et al, 2015). These direct human impacts can potentially both demonstrate the human consequences of climate change and complicate interpretation of vegetation change in strictly climatic terms.…”

High genetic diversity declines towards the geographic range periphery of Adonis vernalis, a Eurasian dry grassland plant

“…For example, Magyari et al (2010) identified wooded steppe, which represents a highly suitable habitat for A. vernalis, as the main vegetation type in the Hungarian Plain during the first half of the Holocence. Further, palaeo-environmental data of the Pannonian Plain provided evidence that about 20% of the landscape were characterised by a stable openness during the entire Holocene, and that Neolithic people contributed to maintain these existing open habitats (Kune s et al 2015). The presence of open landscapes in the Middle Ages is also well documented, both in Central Europe (Poschlod & WallisDeVries 2002) and in Russia (Chibilyev 1998).…”