From pollen percentage to regional vegetation cover — A new insight into cultural landscape development in western Norway

Mehl, Ingvild Kristine; Hjelle, Kari Loe

doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2015.02.005

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Our analyses together with earlier studies (Felde et al, ; Matthias et al, ) suggest that methods accommodating pollen‐representation bias in pollen richness studies warrant further attention and should become as widely used as pollen‐production transformations in land‐cover reconstruction studies (e.g. Mazier et al, ; Mehl & Hjelle, ; Roberts et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Our analyses together with earlier studies Matthias et al, 2015) suggest that methods accommodating pollen-representation bias in pollen richness studies warrant further attention and should become as widely used as pollen-production transformations in land-cover reconstruction studies (e.g. Mazier et al, 2015;Mehl & Hjelle, 2015;Roberts et al, 2018). The studies that investigate pollen-plant richness relationships often use the pollen type-based plant richness to reduce the influence of taxonomic bias where some pollen taxa include considerably more species than others Goring et al, 2013;Meltsov et al, 2011).…”

Section: Pollen Richness In Relation To Plant Richnessmentioning

confidence: 68%

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Patterns of modern pollen and plant richness across northern Europe

et al. 2019

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Sedimentary pollen offers excellent opportunities to reconstruct vegetation changes over past millennia. Number of different pollen taxa or pollen richness is used to characterise past plant richness. To improve the interpretation of sedimentary pollen richness, it is essential to understand the relationship between pollen and plant richness in contemporary landscapes. This study presents a regional‐scale comparison of pollen and plant richness from northern Europe and evaluates the importance of environmental variables on pollen and plant richness. We use a pollen dataset of 511 lake‐surface pollen samples ranging through temperate, boreal and tundra biomes. To characterise plant diversity, we use a dataset formulated from the two largest plant atlases available in Europe. We compare pollen and plant richness estimates in different groups of taxa (wind‐pollinated vs. non‐wind‐pollinated, trees and shrubs vs. herbs and grasses) and test their relationships with climate and landscape variables. Pollen richness is significantly positively correlated with plant richness (r = 0.53). The pollen plant richness correlation improves (r = 0.63) when high pollen producers are downweighted prior to estimating richness minimising the influence of pollen production on the pollen richness estimate. This suggests that methods accommodating pollen‐production differences in richness estimates deserve further attention and should become more widely used in Quaternary pollen diversity studies. The highest correlations are found between pollen and plant richness of trees and shrubs (r = 0.83) and of wind‐pollinated taxa (r = 0.75) suggesting that these are the best measures of broad‐scale plant richness over several thousands of square kilometres. Mean annual temperature is the strongest predictor of both pollen and plant richness. Landscape openness is positively associated with pollen richness but not with plant richness. Pollen richness values from extremely open and/or cold areas where pollen production is low should be interpreted with caution because low local pollen production increases the proportion of extra‐regional pollen. Synthesis. Our results confirm that pollen data can provide insights into past plant richness changes in northern Europe, and with careful consideration of pollen‐production differences and spatial scale represented, pollen data make it possible to investigate vegetation diversity trends over long time‐scales and under changing climatic and habitat conditions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Pollen Richness In Relation To Plant Richnessmentioning

confidence: 68%

Patterns of modern pollen and plant richness across northern Europe

et al. 2019

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“…For example, there is much evidence suggesting that there was a general expansion of agriculture during the early part of the first millennium BC (e.g. Tesch, 1991;Gaillard et al, 1994;Petersson, 2006;Pedersen and Widgren, 2011;Berglund et al, 2014;Mehl and Hjelle, 2015), i.e. during the period when several authors place the origin of meadow management.…”

Section: Harvesting Foddermentioning

confidence: 99%

Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden: A Review

Eriksson

2020

Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History

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This review concerns when and why infield meadows developed, i.e. enclosed land, constructed and managed for production of livestock fodder. Meadows have been associated with 'stalling' of livestock, in turn associated with, for example, protection from adverse weather conditions, increasing efficiency of milk and manure production, or changing human-animal relationships. The suggested timing for origin of meadows ranges from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Meadows are embedded in a complex of interactions, including aspects of culture, material conditions and the environment, and these were treated as different components, unfolding over time: harvesting fodder, stalling livestock, milk production, use of manure, crops and permanent fields, fencing systems, tools, and settlements and land ownership. The interpretation is based on Hodder's entanglement theory. It is concluded that these component's appearance is distributed over a very long time, from the Neolithic to the first centuries AD, when meadows, viewed as a 'complete' system, appeared. People most likely for long knew the advantages of feeding livestock, and the means to achieve this: collecting additional fodder, keep livestock in close quarters, eventually indoors, and collect and distribute manure on crop fields, but the introduction of iron tools during the centuries around AD was the key to develop meadows. Stalling livestock and construction of infield meadows may have been partly decoupled. Although climate change was not a driver behind development of meadows, the agricultural system with meadows and livestock stalling was adaptive during later periods of climate deterioration, and for colonization of northern forests in Sweden.

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“…REVEALS has been evaluated (e.g., Hellman, Gaillard, Broström, & Sugita, ; Sugita, Parshall, Calcote, & Walker, ; Soepboer, Sugita, & Lotter, ; Abraham, Oušková, & Kuneš, ; Hjelle, Mehl, Sugita, & Andersen, ) with encouraging results. Regional vegetation has been estimated using REVEALS (e.g., Fyfe et al., ; Marquer et al., ; Kuneš et al., ; Mehl & Hjelle, ), and all papers point to more open vegetation during the Holocene, than indicated by pollen percentages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term changes in regional vegetation cover along the west coast of southern Norway: The importance of human impact

Hjelle

Halvorsen

Prøsch-Danielsen

et al. 2018

J Vegetation Science

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Questions How open was the landscape prior to agriculture? Did agriculture start earlier in the south than in the north? How did the vegetation change in different regions after the introduction of agriculture? Location Coast of SW and W Norway. Methods The REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites) model is applied for pollen‐based vegetation reconstruction in 19 time windows over the last 9,000 years. Pollen data from 63 sites (lakes and bogs) are compiled and systematically used for data analysis so that the structure of vegetation change in space and time is captured. Results Estimated cover of selected trees, shrubs, Calluna, graminids and herbs indicate a partly open outer coast throughout the Holocene. The highest tree cover is estimated for 8,200–6,200 cal. BP. Broad‐leaved trees (Fraxinus, Quercus, Tilia and Ulmus) spread from south to north and were present in the whole region at the end of the Mesolithic (5,950 cal. BP). Larger spatial variation in tree cover and a step‐wise reduction in deciduous trees after 5,700 cal. BP is concordant with increases in open‐land taxa indicating human activity. Vegetation changes caused by agriculture are indicated in the very south from ca. 5,950 cal. BP. Distinct human‐induced vegetation changes with spatial differentiation took place from 4,200 to 1,700 cal. BP, when most of the areas earlier covered by deciduous woodland had been transformed to cultivated fields, grasslands and heathlands. Increased Poaceae cover from 1,700 cal. BP probably reflects the expansion of mown meadows in addition to pastures. Conclusions Capturing continuous changes of vegetation structure in space and time elucidates open areas along the western coast prior to the introduction of agriculture. Agriculture started earliest in the very south and spread rapidly along the whole coast prior to the Late Neolithic. Differences within the study area have existed in all time periods, reflecting different land‐use practices adapted to different natural conditions.

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From pollen percentage to regional vegetation cover — A new insight into cultural landscape development in western Norway

Cited by 20 publications

References 65 publications

Patterns of modern pollen and plant richness across northern Europe

Patterns of modern pollen and plant richness across northern Europe

Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden: A Review

Long‐term changes in regional vegetation cover along the west coast of southern Norway: The importance of human impact

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