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Quantitative Environmental Reconstructions from Biological Data

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Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments

Part of the book series: Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research ((DPER,volume 5))

Abstract

Quantitative reconstructions of past environmental conditions (e.g., pH) are an important part of palaeolimnology. Such reconstructions involve three steps: (1) the development of a representative modern organism-environment training-set, (2) the development and application of appropriate numerical techniques to model the relationship between modern occurrences and abundances of the organisms in the training-set and their contemporary environment, and (3) the application of this model to stratigraphical palaeolimnological data to infer past environmental conditions, and model selection, testing, and evaluation and assessment of the final reconstruction. These three stages are discussed. Problems of spatial autocorrelation are outlined. The general approach is illustrated by a case-study. The assumptions and limitations of the calibration-function approach are presented, and violations of these assumptions are discussed in relation to different environmental reconstructions. Appropriate computer software is outlined, and future research areas are presented. The chapter challenges palaeolimnologists to be more critical of their environmental-inference models and to be alert to the problems and dangers of confounding variables, and of violating the main assumptions of the approach.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Richard J. Telford, Cajo ter Braak, John Smol, and Hilary Birks for helpful discussions and/or reading an early draft of the Chapter and Cathy Jenks for invaluable editorial help. This is publication A360 from the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

    Steve Juggins

  2. Department of Biology and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, 7803, Bergen, N-5020, Norway

    H. John B. Birks

  3. Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London, Pearson Building,Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    H. John B. Birks

  4. School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    H. John B. Birks

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  1. Allegaten 41, Bergen, 5007, Norway

    H. John B. Birks

  2. Dept. Geobiology, Lab. Palaeobotany and Palynology, University Utrecht, Budapestlaan 4, Utrecht, 3584 CD, Netherlands

    André F. Lotter

  3. , School of Geography,, Newcastle University, Daysh Building 14b, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom

    Steve Juggins

  4. Dept. Biology, Paleoecological Environmental, Queen's University, Kingston, K7L 3N6, Ontario, Canada

    John P. Smol

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Juggins, S., Birks, H.J.B. (2012). Quantitative Environmental Reconstructions from Biological Data. In: Birks, H., Lotter, A., Juggins, S., Smol, J. (eds) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments. Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2745-8_14

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