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Records of vegetation in time and space: the principles of pollen analysis

  • Chapter
Vegetation history

Part of the book series: Handbook of vegetation science ((HAVS,volume 7))

Abstract

Pollen analysis is the technique most widely used to generate historical vegetation data over long periods (103 and 106 yr). Pollen data are valuable as a record of the response of ecosystems to human impacts in history and prehistory, as a rich source of information about natural vegetation dynamics, and as the only empirical evidence for the behaviour of plant taxa and assemblages when subjected to major climatic and environmental changes. Many studies of contemporary (surface) pollen deposition have shown that pollen assemblages are diagnostic for broadly defined vegetation types such as formations or forest-types. Other surface pollen studies have established that there is a quantitative relationship between the pollen percentages of the major taxa and their relative importance in the vegetation. Maps based on surface pollen data reflect patterns of species abundance over a range of spatial scales (Fig. 1). Pollen diagrams can therefore be assumed to reflect vegetation change, and maps based on adequately time-correlated fossil pollen assemblages can be assumed to reflect vegetational patterns that existed in the past — allowing vegetation to be mapped in time and space.

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Authors
  1. Colin Prentice
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botony, Science Laboratories, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, England

    B. Huntley

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 02912-1846, USA

    T. Webb III

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Prentice, C. (1988). Records of vegetation in time and space: the principles of pollen analysis. In: Huntley, B., Webb, T. (eds) Vegetation history. Handbook of vegetation science, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3081-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3081-0_2

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