Europe’s lost forests: a pollen-based synthesis for the last 11,000 years
Neil Roberts|Ralph Fyfe|Jessie Woodbridge|Marie-José Gaillard|Basil Davis|Jed O. Kaplan|Laurent Marquer|Florence Mazier|Anne Birgitte Nielsen|S. Sugita|Anna-Kari Trondman|Michelle Leydet
Abstract 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 cleared make way for fields and pasture-land. Establishing the origin current, more open land-cover mosaic requires long-term perspective, which pollen analysis offers key tool. In this study we utilise compare three numerical approaches transforming data into past cover, drawing on &gt;1000 14 C-dated site records. All reconstructions highlight different histories mixed temperate northern boreal forests, with former declining since ~6000 linked clearance agriculture later prehistory (especially northwest Europe) early historic times (e.g. north central Europe). contrast, extensive human impact needle-leaf forests only becomes detectable last two millennia left larger area place. Forest loss dominant feature landscape ecology second current interglacial, consequences carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning biodiversity.
Scientific Reports|HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)|HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)|HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)|Europe PMC (PubMed Central)|HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)|PEARL (University of Plymouth)|HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)|OPUS (Augsburg University)|MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society)|PubMed Central|PubMed