Potential natural vegetation and pre-anthropic pollen records on the Azores Islands in a Macaronesian context

Valenti Rull, Simon Connor, Rui. B Elias

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    Abstract

    This paper discusses the concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV) in the light of the pollen records available to date for the Macaronesian biogeographical region, with emphasis on the Azores Islands. The classical debate on the convenience or not of the PNV concept has been recently revived in the Canary Islands, where pollen records of pre-anthropic vegetation seemed to strongly disagree with the existing PNV reconstructions. Contrastingly, more recent PNV model outputs from the Azores Islands show outstanding parallelisms with pre-anthropic pollen records, at least in qualitative terms. We suggest the development of more detailed quantitative studies to compare these methodologies as an opportunity for improving the performance of both. PNV modelling may benefit by incorporating empirical data on past vegetation useful for calibration and validation purposes, whereas palynology may improve past reconstructions by minimizing interpretative biases linked to differential pollen production, dispersal and preservation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)2437-2440
    JournalJournal of Biogeography
    Volume44
    Issue number11
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

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