The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Filed work on färskesjön 2013

Anne Birgitte Nielsen

Senior lecturer

Filed work on färskesjön 2013

Europe's lost forests : A pollen-based synthesis for the last 11,000 years

Author

  • N. Roberts
  • R. M. Fyfe
  • J. Woodbridge
  • M. J. Gaillard
  • B. A.S. Davis
  • J. O. Kaplan
  • L. Marquer
  • F. Mazier
  • A. B. Nielsen
  • S. Sugita
  • A. K. Trondman
  • M. Leydet

Summary, in English

8000 years ago, prior to Neolithic agriculture, Europe was mostly a wooded continent. Since then, its forest cover has been progressively fragmented, so that today it covers less than half of Europe's land area, in many cases having been cleared to make way for fields and pasture-land. Establishing the origin of Europe's current, more open land-cover mosaic requires a long-term perspective, for which pollen analysis offers a key tool. In this study we utilise and compare three numerical approaches to transforming pollen data into past forest cover, drawing on >1000 14C-dated site records. All reconstructions highlight the different histories of the mixed temperate and the northern boreal forests, with the former declining progressively since ∼6000 years ago, linked to forest clearance for agriculture in later prehistory (especially in northwest Europe) and early historic times (e.g. in north central Europe). In contrast, extensive human impact on the needle-leaf forests of northern Europe only becomes detectable in the last two millennia and has left a larger area of forest in place. Forest loss has been a dominant feature of Europe's landscape ecology in the second half of the current interglacial, with consequences for carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system

Publishing year

2018-12-01

Language

English

Publication/Series

Scientific Reports

Volume

8

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Topic

  • Physical Geography
  • Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use

Status

Published

Project

  • PAGES’ LandCover6k Working Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2045-2322