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When no pollen does not mean no trees

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Abstract

The question of what signal, if any, appears in the pollen record when trees are present in the vegetation without producing pollen or with no pollen being recorded, is addressed. Four scenarios are envisaged: (i) the number of trees in the landscape are very few and scattered, (ii) the trees are too young to produce pollen, (iii) climate conditions are unfavourable for the trees to produce pollen and (iv) the trees are cut or damaged so that they do not flower. Each of these is considered in terms of pollen accumulation rates (PARs) and present theories and models of pollen dispersal. Examples are provided for the forest limit areas of the northern boreal trees in Finnish Lapland using data of pollen deposition monitored by pollen traps and results from the high temporal resolution (near annual) analyses of peat profiles. The relevance of the results to questions such as finds of spruce macrofossils in the Swedish mountains, the 8200 cal b.p. cold event, the migration of species/vegetation succession, and widespread damage to trees are all considered. It is concluded that although these situations are sometimes ‘invisible’ or misrepresented when pollen assemblages are expressed in the traditional percentage manner, they are often revealed by PARs. The fact that the pollen assemblage reflects a much wider regional area than is often understood can strengthen signals which have a regional impact, such as those which are climate induced, but may obscure events which affect only a limited spatial area or occur as small patches in the landscape.

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Acknowledgements

It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this contribution to Brigitta Ammann, who has constantly supported and encouraged pollen monitoring and was the prime mover in establishing the Pollen Monitoring Programme (PMP) as an INQUA workgroup. I have greatly enjoyed her lively and pertinent discussions and her continued interest over the years has been of utmost value. The ideas presented here arise from discussions linking three projects: PMP (Pollen Monitoring Programme), PINE (Predicting Impacts on Natural Ecotones: EVK2-CT-2002-00136) and POLLANDCAL (POLlen-LANDscape CALibrations: a NordForsk network) and forms a contribution to all of them. A. Lotter and W. Tinner kindly reviewed an earlier version of the text and provided valuable comments. The map in Fig. 1 was produced by H. Suutari, help with the pollen counting was provided by R.-L. Huttunen, J. van Leeuwen, H. Hyötylä and H. Hyyppä and the analyses in Fig. 4 were performed by R. Jalkanen who also provided critical information on the growth of pines. To all of these people I offer my sincere thanks.

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  1. Institute of Geosciences, P.O. BOX 3000, 90014, University of Oulu, Finland

    Sheila Hicks

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  1. Sheila Hicks
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Correspondence to Sheila Hicks.

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Communicated by Pim van der Knaap

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Hicks, S. When no pollen does not mean no trees. Veget Hist Archaeobot 15, 253–261 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0063-9

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