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Vegetation history pp 385–414Cite as

Eastern North America

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Part of the book series: Handbook of vegetation science ((HAVS,volume 7))

Abstract

Patterns in modern vegetation can be viewed from a paleoecological perspective as patterns on the upper surface of a box whose horizontal axes are longitude and latitude and whose vertical axis is time (Fig. 1 in Grimm, this volume). Paleoecological studies based on pollen data allow ecologists to peer beneath this surface and see how the changing location, abundance, and association of the individual taxa have produced different plant assemblages and influenced the development of the modern vegetation patterns. During the past 18,000 years, some taxa have always grown abundantly over wide areas; the histories of these taxa can be traced by the changing location of constant-abundance surfaces that stretch continuously from the top to the bottom of the box. Other taxa appear to emerge from almost nothing and expand suddenly to become abundant over wide areas. Some of these taxa may later decrease in abundance and extent only to reappear abundantly elsewhere at a later date. The three-dimensional patterns of taxon distributions represent the history of individual taxa and Illustrate how they have changed in abundance and location through time.

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  1. Thompson Webb III
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botony, Science Laboratories, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, England

    B. Huntley

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 02912-1846, USA

    T. Webb III

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Webb, T. (1988). Eastern North America. In: Huntley, B., Webb, T. (eds) Vegetation history. Handbook of vegetation science, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3081-0_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3081-0_11

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