Pollen-Based Reconstruction of Holocene Land-Cover

Dear Colleagues,

Land cover is a principal component of the earth system, which influences global and regional climate through biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedback processes. In addition, the application of pollen-based land-cover reconstructions in a regional climate model shows that anthropogenic deforestation has a significant effect on mean temperatures in both summer and winter. As the basis of the terrestrial ecosystem, vegetation is directly linked to landscape-scale biodiversity. Understanding the long-term interactions between climate, vegetation, and human activities is crucial for assessing future biodiversity and climate change and decision making for adaption. Recent advances in palaeoecological research have produced a number of different pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction methods (LRA, MAT, Biome, etc.). Studies from northern Europe show a good correlation between pollen-based estimates and plant diversity, suggesting that palaeo-proxies can successfully be used to assess the dynamics of past vegetation diversity.

However, to date, the palaeoecological proxy-based quantitative reconstructions of Holocene land cover change have, thus far, only been available for Europe and some parts of Asia and northern China, based on REVEALS estimates. Furthermore, the pollen-based biodiversity assessments of mostly European origin have not been thoroughly tested in variable plant diversity conditions.

These shortcomings hinder our understanding of the past and predictions of future vegetation dynamics and their interaction with anthropogenic and natural drivers at local to regional to continental scales worldwide. Therefore, we encourage the publishing of new studies to fill the gaps in our knowledge of long-term land cover changes.

For this Special Issue, we are interested in contributions that are linked to pollen-based reconstruction of Holocene land-cover, including but not limited to:

• Quantifying modern pollen–vegetation relationships;
• Regional–continental scales vegetation reconstructions based on REVEALS model;
• Local vegetation reconstruction based on the LRA approach;
• Vegetation response to Holocene climate change;
• Distinguishment of the effect of anthropogenic and natural land-cover change on climate;
• Holocene plant diversity study based on pollen;
• Novel methods in the quantitative reconstruction of past land-cover, based on pollen;
• Feedback of land-cover changes on the climate system: perspective from climate modeling.

Dr. Qiao-Yu Cui
Dr. Laurent Marquer
Dr. Anneli Poska
Dr. Furong Li
Dr. Florence Mazier
Guest Editors

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• past land use and anthropogenic land cover changes
• vegetation and land cover reconstruction
• pollen-based climate reconstruction
• holocene vegetation–climate interactions
• holocene vegetation dynamics
• climate–human interactions
• plant diversity and biodiversity