Approaches to quantitative reconstruction of woody vegetation in managed woodlands from pollen records

Abstract

Please cite this article as: Bunting, M.J., Grant, M.J., Waller, M., Approaches to quantitative reconstruction of woody vegetation in managed woodlands from pollen records, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2015 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton, European Way, Southampton, ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT SO14 3ZHC Department of Geography and Geology, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, AbstractThere has been increasing interest in developing quantitative methods for reconstructing the dynamics of cultural landscapes over the last 15 years. This paper adds to this literature by using various approaches to reconstruct the vegetation of two woodlands subject to rotational coppicing (the periodic cutting of broadleaved trees and shrubs for wood products). Pollen deposition at ground level was determined at both sites using 'Tauber' traps placed near to the centre of 14 compartments of differing age in the coppice rotation.For the main woody taxa, Relative Pollen Productivity (RPP) estimates were derived using linear regression for pollen influx data and Extended R-value analysis for percentage data.The vegetation around three ponds was reconstructed by applying four methods (inverting the two RPP estimate approaches, the modern analogue technique and correction for pollen productivity using the linear regression estimated RPP values) to pollen data obtained from the uppermost sample of sediment from the ponds. To determine whether these methods gave better estimates of the vegetation composition than the original pollen proportions, the results were compared with the surveyed vegetation around each pond using the BrayCurtis Index. Linear regression of pollen influx produced RPP values which are comparable with previous European studies, while for some taxa the Extended R-value analysis produced estimates which are orders of magnitude different both from values derived from the linear regression and previous work. No single approach performed equally well at reconstructing the vegetation around the ponds, and at two of the three locations the uncorrected pollen proportions were most similar to the surveyed vegetation. We conclude that applying quantitative reconstruction methods to individual small sites is, currently, not likely to be useful in complex cultural landscapes. In the context of coppiced woodland, A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT3 deficiencies in our understanding of pollen taphonomy and the impact of the practice on polle...

Novel methods of estimating relative pollen productivity: A key parameter for reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records

“…However, in these scatter plots there appear to be two or more possible linear relationships. The high pollen/low dwpa points may represent cases where other transport mechanisms such as gravity or insects are dominating the pollen signal formation (Bunting et al, 2016).…”

“…The sample locations (Appendix 4) are in several different vegetation communities, which may partly explain the variations seen, and in some cases the scatter plots suggest that the taxa are distributed by transport mechanisms such as gravity or insect movement rather than solely by wind, therefore a model assumption is breached (see e.g. Bunting et al, 2016). For example, Castanea pollen was sometimes found on slides as clumps, suggesting that a whole anther had fallen into the moss sample from a nearby tree.…”

“…Input datasets were inspected using scatter plots of pollen percentage against dwpa summed to 2000 m. A reference taxon was selected on grounds of having a wide range of both pollen percentages and dwpa values and showing a broadly linear scatter, and taxa with few non-zero data points or multiple outliers excluded (see e.g. Bunting et al, 2016).…”

A comparison of relative pollen productivity from forest steppe, typical steppe and desert steppe in Inner Mongolia

“…论 文 欧洲大部分地区主要花粉类型的RPP已得到成 功估算. 如在英格兰地区 [8,9] , 桤木属(Alnus)、桦木属 (Betula)、栎属(Quercus)等主要木本植物的RPP已得 到估算; 在瑞典地区 [10] , 禾本科(Gramineae)、帚石楠 属(Calluna)、菊科(Compositae)、莎草科(Cyperaceae) 等植物的RPP已得到估算; 在瑞士高原 [11] , 云杉属 (Picea)、松属(Pinus)、桦木属的RPP已被估算. 但是, 不同地区的同一花粉类型的RPP存在显著差异, 并且 在相近的地区, 这种差异也仍然存在.…”

Palynology and the study of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the British Isles

“…The restructuring of the woodland caused by coppicing, either by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (Bishop et al 2015) or by early Neolithic farmers (Göransson 1982), may be discernable in pollen data as it causes diagnostic fluctuations in pollen frequencies during the coppice rotation period, favouring pollen production by coppiced under-storey types like Corylus (hazel: Plate 1h), even under short coppicing cycles, and greatly reduces the representation of other coppiced trees like Tilia (lime). For reasons of taphonomy and production, however, pollen assemblages from coppiced woodland are highly variable, and at present no unambiguous signals of coppice management can be defined and applied to the fossil record, although this is a promising area of study (Bunting et al 2016). Göransson (1982Göransson ( , 1986 has suggested an hypothesis where ring-barking of trees may have been the preferred method for opening the woodland, although shredding and leaf-collecting may also have played a role (Moe and Rackham 1992).…”