Testing the effect of relative pollen productivity on the REVEALS model: a validated reconstruction of Europe-wide Holocene vegetation

Reliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucial to improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effects of environmental variables and land-use change on ecosystems and biodiversity, and mitigating their effects in the future. We present here the most spatially extensive and temporally continuous pollen-based reconstructions of plant cover in Europe (at a spatial resolution of 1° × 1°) over the Holocene (last 11.7 ka BP) using the ‘Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites’ (REVEALS) model. This study has three main aims. First, to present the most accurate and reliable generation of REVEALS reconstructions across Europe so far. This has been achieved by including a larger number of pollen records compared to former analyses, in particular from the Mediterranean area. Second, to discuss methodological issues in the quantification of past land cover by using alternative datasets of relative pollen productivities (RPPs), one of the key input parameters of REVEALS, to test model sensitivity. Finally, to validate our reconstructions with the global forest change dataset. The results suggest that the RPPs.st1 (31 taxa) dataset is best suited to producing regional vegetation cover estimates for Europe. These reconstructions offer a long-term perspective providing unique possibilities to explore spatial-temporal changes in past land cover and biodiversity.

Europe, Holocene, REVEALS model, pollen data, quantitative past land cover, relative pollen productivity, validation

10.3390/land12050986

2009-2415

Serge, M.A.

413a28a8-64c6-49fa-8fdd-d6e86de25935

Mazier, Florence

f860a2a7-b8b1-491e-8d1c-5c0bcf8ec5e9

Fyfe, Ralph

0efffd2b-297e-4867-a585-e7ad6c4468db

Grant, Michael

56dae074-d54a-4da8-858a-2bf364a5a550

et al.

29 April 2023

Serge, M.A.

413a28a8-64c6-49fa-8fdd-d6e86de25935

Mazier, Florence

f860a2a7-b8b1-491e-8d1c-5c0bcf8ec5e9

Fyfe, Ralph

0efffd2b-297e-4867-a585-e7ad6c4468db

Grant, Michael

56dae074-d54a-4da8-858a-2bf364a5a550

Serge, M.A., Mazier, Florence and Fyfe, Ralph , et al. (2023) Testing the effect of relative pollen productivity on the REVEALS model: a validated reconstruction of Europe-wide Holocene vegetation. Land, 12 (5), [986]. (doi:10.3390/land12050986).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Text

Serge2023_Testing the Effect of Relative Pollen Productivity on the - Author's Original

Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (3MB)

Text

land-12-00986-v3 - Version of Record

Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (6MB)

More information

Submitted date: 27 March 2023

Accepted/In Press date: 22 April 2023

e-pub ahead of print date: 29 April 2023

Published date: 29 April 2023

Additional Information: Funding Information: This research was funded by the TERRANOVA Project, H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 813904. Funding Information: The work was supported by the project TERRANOVA, the European Landscape Learning Initiative, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 813904. The output reflects the views of the authors only, and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. This study is also a contribution to the Past Global Change (PAGES) project and its working group LandCover6k ( http://pastglobalchanges.org/landcover6k , accessed on 24 April 2023) that in turn received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. M.-J. Gaillard acknowledges the financial support from Linnaeus University’s Faculty of Health and Life Science and the Swedish strategic research area MERGE (ModEling the Regional and Global Earth system; www.merge.lu.se , accessed on 24 April 2023). Anneli Poska was supported by the project TrackLag, Tracking the time-lags of species response to environmental change using palaeo-proxy data and modelling (ETF grant PRG323). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.

Keywords: Europe, Holocene, REVEALS model, pollen data, quantitative past land cover, relative pollen productivity, validation