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Björn E Berglund

Björn Berglund

Professor emeritus

Björn E Berglund

From landscape description to quantification: A new generation of reconstructions provides new perspectives on Holocene regional landscapes of SE Sweden

Author

  • Christine Åkesson
  • Anne Birgitte Nielsen
  • Anna Brostrom
  • Thomas Persson
  • Marie-Jose Gaillard
  • Björn Berglund

Summary, in English

The development since the beginning of the 20th century of the pollen-analytical theory and method as a palaeoecological tool for describing landscape development is outlined with reference to southern Scandinavia. Numerical methods applied since the 1980s are discussed. The aim of this paper is to provide a new perspective on the landscape development and human impact during the Holocene by applying the Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites (REVEALS) model to the pollen records from the reference site Lake Farskesjon in SE Sweden. The model was applied both to a previously published record (core 1956, entire Holocene until ad 1600) and a newly collected dataset (core 2013, the last 3000years). The comparison between the REVEALS estimates of vegetation cover and historical landscape maps indicate that traditional, uncorrected pollen percentages significantly underestimate the degree of landscape openness created by long-term farming and pasturing, but that the degree of underestimation varies over time, depending on the species composition of both the forest and the open-land communities. The REVEALS reconstructions are also a useful tool for the quantification of past land-use changes that may have affected the nutrient loading to the Baltic Sea.

Department/s

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

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

178-193

Publication/Series

The Holocene

Volume

25

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Geology
  • Physical Geography

Keywords

  • biodiversity changes
  • human impact
  • pollen-analytical theory
  • pollen-based landscape reconstruction
  • REVEALS model

Status

Published

Project

  • Land-Sea Interactions over the last 6000 years (LSI6K): Impact of land-use change on terrestrial carbon pools in the Baltic Sea catchment, and their effect on aquatic ecosystems

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0959-6836