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Anna Maria Jönsson

Professor

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Spatially Continuous Land-Cover Reconstructions Through the Holocene in Southern Sweden

Author

  • Robert O’Dwyer
  • Laurent Marquer
  • Anna Kari Trondman
  • Anna Maria Jönsson

Summary, in English

Climate change and human activities influence the development of ecosystems, with human demand of ecosystem services altering both land use and land cover. Fossil pollen records provide time series of vegetation characteristics, and the aim of this study was to create spatially continuous reconstructions of land cover through the Holocene in southern Sweden. The Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) was applied to obtain quantitative reconstructions of pollen-based vegetation cover at local scales, accounting for pollen production, dispersal, and deposition mechanisms. Pollen-based local vegetation estimates were produced from 41 fossil pollen records available for the region. A comparison of 17 interpolation methods was made and evaluated by comparing with current land cover. Simple kriging with cokriging using elevation was selected to interpolate the local characteristics of past land cover, to generate more detailed reconstructions of trends and degree of variability in time and space than previous studies based on pollen data representing the regional scale. Since the Mesolithic, two main processes have acted to reshape the land cover of southern Sweden, originally mostly covered by broad-leaved forests. The natural distribution limit of coniferous forest has moved southward during periods with colder climate and retracted northward during warmer periods, and human expansion in the area and agrotechnological developments has led to a gradually more open landscape, reaching maximum openness at the beginning of the 20th century. The recent intensification of agriculture has led to abandonment of less fertile agricultural fields and afforestation with conifer forest.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2021-01-28

Language

English

Pages

1450-1467

Publication/Series

Ecosystems

Volume

24

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Keywords

  • Ecosystem services
  • Fossil pollen
  • Interpolation methods
  • Land cover
  • Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm
  • Southern Sweden

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1432-9840