Abstract
The Late Glacial and early-Holocene vegetational history of a newly dated pollen and macrofossil diagram from Besbog, a cirque lake at 2250 m just above the forest limit in the Pirin Mountains of southwestern Bulgaria, is compared with a newly dated pollen diagram for the mire Shiroka Polyana at 1400 m in the conifer forest of the nearby Rhodope Mountains in order to investigate the chronology of major changes in the vegetation at different elevations. In the Lake Besbog record the non-arboreal pollen assemblage of the Late Glacial changed abruptly to that of Betula, Quercus and other deciduous types. The date for this change is about 11.6 ka cal b.p. The Quercus assemblage may be composed of pollen blown from intermediate elevations, to which deciduous forest had expanded because of higher summer temperatures related to high summer insolation. At Shiroka Polyana (1400 m) in the modern conifer belt, a similar change did not occur until about 8.8 ka cal b.p. The persistence of the dry steppe or steppe forest in the early Holocene at this lower site can also be attributed to high summer insolation. Thus as atmospheric temperature increased at the end of the Late Glacial, deciduous forests expanded first at intermediate elevations in the Pirin Mountains and only later in the Rhodope Mountains at lower elevations as summer insolation decreased.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is an appropriate contribution to this volume because of the enthusiastic participation by Brigitta in the field work in the Pirin Mountains and for her interest in the history of vegetation in the mountains of southwestern Eurasia.
The staff of the Regional Office of National Park Pirin arranged for permission for the field work at and around Lake Besbog, where B. Ammann, M. Delcheva, V. Bozukov, D. Dimitrov, V. Vutov, M. Bonkin and I. Bonkin assisted with the sediment coring. L. Filipovitch organised the original research in the Rhodope Mountains. Funding for the Besbog study was provided by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. National Science Foundation. The text has been improved as a result of helpful critiques by E. Magyari and another reviewer.
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Stefanova, V., Lazarova, M. & Wright, H.E. Elevational gradients during the Late-Glacial/Holocene vegetational transition in southern Bulgaria. Veget Hist Archaeobot 15, 333–343 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0049-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0049-7