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Pollen productivity estimates of key European plant taxa for quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation: a review

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Abstract

Information on the spatial distribution of past vegetation on local, regional and global scales is increasingly used within climate modelling, nature conservancy and archaeology. It is possible to obtain such information from fossil pollen records in lakes and bogs using the landscape reconstruction algorithm (LRA) and its two models, REVEALS and LOVE. These models assume that reliable pollen productivity estimates (PPEs) are available for the plant taxa involved in the quantitative reconstructions of past vegetation, and that PPEs are constant through time. This paper presents and discusses the PPEs for 15 tree and 18 herb taxa obtained in nine study areas of Europe. Observed differences in PPEs between regions may be explained by methodological issues and environmental variables, of which climate and related factors such as reproduction strategies and growth forms appear to be the most important. An evaluation of the PPEs at hand so far suggests that they can be used in modelling applications and quantitative reconstructions of past vegetation, provided that consideration of past environmental variability within the region is used to inform selection of PPEs, and bearing in mind that PPEs might have changed through time as a response to climate change. Application of a range of possible PPEs will allow a better evaluation of the results.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is a contribution to the POLLANDCAL (POLlen-LANDscape CALibration) network (http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/ecrc/pollandcal/) sponsored by Nordforsk. We are very thankful to all POLLANDCAL members for useful and inspiring discussions during numerous network workshops (2001–2007). The manuscript was improved thanks to the helpful comments and suggestions from two anonymous referees. We also wish to thank Beate Helle for the layout of Fig. 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geobiosphere Science Centre, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, 22362, Lund, Sweden

    Anna Broström

  2. Department of Quaternary Geology, Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark, Ø. Voldgade 10, 1350, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Anne Birgitte Nielsen

  3. School of Pure and Applied Natural Sciences, University of Kalmar, 39182, Kalmar, Sweden

    Marie-José Gaillard & Florence Mazier

  4. Natural History Collections, University of Bergen, 5007, Bergen, Norway

    Kari Hjelle

  5. Faculty of Science, UMR 6565, 25000, Besançon, France

    Florence Mazier

  6. Palaeoecology Laboratory, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO1 7BJ, UK

    Heather Binney

  7. Department of Geography, University of Hull, Kingston-Upon-Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

    Jane Bunting

  8. School of Geography, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

    Ralph Fyfe

  9. Institute of Geology at Tallinn University of Technology, Ehitajate tee 5, 19086, Tallinn, Estonia

    Viveca Meltsov & Anneli Poska

  10. Department of Geography, University of Oulu, P.O.Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Satu Räsänen & Henna Suutari

  11. Department of Palaeoecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Welmoed Soepboer

  12. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden

    Henrik von Stedingk

  13. University of Minnesota, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, 100 Ecology Building, 1987, Upper Buford Circle, St Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Shinya Sugita

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  1. Anna Broström
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  2. Anne Birgitte Nielsen
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Correspondence to Anna Broström.

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Communicated by J. Dearing.

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Broström, A., Nielsen, A.B., Gaillard, MJ. et al. Pollen productivity estimates of key European plant taxa for quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation: a review. Veget Hist Archaeobot 17, 461–478 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-008-0148-8

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