Estimating absolute pollen productivity for some European Tertiary-relict taxa

Tertiary-relict plants are survivors from the pre-Quaternary periods. Today, most European Tertiary relicts are confined to small, isolated stands distributed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. In the past, however, the fossil record indicates that these species were probably distributed ov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vegetation history and archaeobotany 2010-08, Vol.19 (4), p.351-364
Main Authors: Filipova-Marinova, Mariana V., Kvavadze, Eliso V., Connor, Simon E., Sjögren, Per
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Archaeology
Biogeosciences
Canopies
Climate Change
Dispersal
Dispersion
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Estimated taxes
Estimates
Fagus orientalis
Forest canopy
Fossils
Juglans regia
Orientalism
Original Article
Paleontology
Plants
Pollen
Productivity
Pterocarya fraxinifolia
Quaternary
Taxa
Trapping
Vegetation
Vegetation cover
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Summary:Tertiary-relict plants are survivors from the pre-Quaternary periods. Today, most European Tertiary relicts are confined to small, isolated stands distributed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. In the past, however, the fossil record indicates that these species were probably distributed over large parts of the European continent and may have been important constituents of the vegetation. Little is known about their pollen representation, which limits our ability to reconstruct this past vegetation with any accuracy. This paper draws on the results of pollen trapping experiments in Bulgaria and Georgia, where relict stands of Aesculus hippocastanum, Cercis siliquastrum, Fagus orientalis, Juglans regia and Pterocarya fraxinifolia are still in existence. We compared average pollen accumulation rates (PAR) to vegetation data from around the trapping locations to derive estimates of absolute pollen productivity using various pollen dispersal functions. Composite dispersal functions that model pollen components carried above the vegetation canopy and falling as rain provided better relationships between PAR and plant abundance than functions that consider only a single component or the 'trunk-space' component carried under the canopy. A composite dispersal function with a simple model for regional pollen and the best overall correlation statistics gave the following estimates of absolute pollen productivity (grains cm-2 yr-1 with 1 SE intervals): Carpinus betulus 19,000—28,700; Fagus orientalis 15,600—20,400; Juglans regia 27,200—36,200; Pterocarya fraxinifolia 182,000—192,600; Quercus spp. 21,700—24,800; Tilia begoniifolia 51,600—68,300; and T. tomentosa 14,700—18,200. These estimates were applied to fossil data from the Black Sea coast to reconstruct palaeovegetation using absolute and relative methods.
ISSN:0939-6314
1617-6278
DOI:10.1007/s00334-010-0257-z