Quantifying pollen-vegetation relationships to reconstruct ancient forests using 19th-century forest composition and pollen data

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:137

Article

Dawson, Andria^1,2  Paciorek, Christopher J.¹  McLachlan, Jason S.³  Goring, Simon⁴  Williams, John W.⁴  Jackson, Stephen T.^2,5 

[1] Univ Calif Berkeley, Dept Stat, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA

[2] Univ Arizona, Dept Geosci, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA

[3] Univ Notre Dame, Dept Biol Sci, South Bend, IN 46556 USA

[4] Univ Wisconsin, Dept Geog, Madison, WI 53706 USA

[5] US Geol Survey, Dept Interior Southwest Climate Sci Ctr, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA

关键词: Pollen;    Fossil;    Sediment;    Vegetation;    Forest;    Bayesian;    Modelling;    Expert elicitation;    Dispersal;    Calibration;    Prediction;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.01.012

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Mitigation of climate change and adaptation to its effects relies partly on how effectively land atmosphere interactions can be quantified. Quantifying composition of past forest ecosystems can help understand processes governing forest dynamics in a changing world. Fossil pollen data provide information about past forest composition, but rigorous interpretation requires development of pollen vegetation models (PVM5) that account for interspecific differences in pollen production and dispersal. Widespread and intensified land-use over the 19th and 20th centuries may have altered pollen vegetation relationships. Here we use STEPPS, a Bayesian hierarchical spatial PVM, to estimate key process parameters and associated uncertainties in the pollen-vegetation relationship. We apply alternate dispersal kernels, and calibrate STEPPS using a newly developed Euro-American settlement-era calibration data set constructed from Public Land Survey data and fossil pollen samples matched to the settlement-era using expert elicitation. Models based on the inverse power-law dispersal kernel outperformed those based on the Gaussian dispersal kernel, indicating that pollen dispersal kernels are fat tailed. Pine and birch have the highest pollen productivities. Pollen productivity and dispersal estimates are generally consistent with previous understanding from modern data sets, although source area estimates are larger. Tests of model predictions demonstrate the ability of STEPPS to predict regional compositional patterns. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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