Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:32:01.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biological evidence of past environments and climatic changes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Jon R. Pilcher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper will examine some of the types of biological evidence that allow us an insight into past environments and will consider some of the concepts that affect and limit our interpretations of past environments, and through them climatic changes.

Scandinavia was the birthplace of palaeoenvironmental studies; basic to these being the concepts of speciation formulated in Uppsala by Linnaeus nearly 250 years ago. Sernander proposed his bog regeneration theories in 1910 and von Post gave his first two lectures on pollen analysis in 1916. Iversen demonstrated how the impact of human activities could be disentangled from climate change and later discussed the effects of lags in the vegetation at the start of the post glacial. These laid the framework for much that I will describe.

At the turn of the century the two botanists Blytt and Sernander proposed a sub-division of the recent past (the post glacial period or Holocene as we now call it) on the basis of biological evidence preserved in bogs. They described wood layers in peat bogs and introduced the terms Boreal and Sub-Boreal for the time spanned by the wood layers, and the Atlantic and Sub-Atlantic for what they interpreted as the intervening wetter periods. These wood layers are as obvious now as they were in 1900 and the terms Boreal and Atlantic have gone in and out of fashion over the intervening years.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , October 1994 , pp. 271 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1.Backeus, I. (1990) The cyclic regeneration on bogs—a hypothesis that became an established truth. In The Development of Modern Geology (Frangsmyr, T. and Konigsson, L.-K., Eds.) Striae 31, 33–35.Google Scholar
2.Iversen, J. (1941) Landnam i Danmarks Stenalder. Land occupation in Denmark's stoneage. Danmarks Geologiske Undersogelse. II Series, 66, 7–68.Google Scholar
3.Iversen, J. (1960) Problems of the early Post-Glacial forest development in Denmark. Danmarks Geologiske Undersogelse. IV Series, 4, 5–32.Google Scholar
4.Stoneman, R., Barber, K. and Maddy, D. (1993) Present and past ecology of Sphagnum imbricatum and its significance in raised peat—climate modelling. Quaternary Newsletter 70, 14–22.Google Scholar
5.Faegri, K. and Iversen, J. (1989) Textbook of Pollen Analysis IV Edition. Wiley, Chichester.Google Scholar
6.Hall, V. A. (1994) Landscape development in N-E Ireland over the last half millennium. Rev. Palaeobotany and Palynoology 82, 75–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Huntley, B. and Prehtice, I. C. (1988) July temperatures in Europe from Pollen data, 6000 years before present. Science 241, 687–690.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
8.Batterbee, R. W., Anderson, N. J., Appleby, P. G., Flower, R. J., Fritz, S. C., Haworth, E. Y., Higgitt, S., Kreiser, A., Munro, M. A. R., Natkanski, J., Oldfield, F., Patrick, S. T., Raven, P. J., Richardson, N., Rippey, B. and Stevenson, A. C. (1988) Lake acidification in the United Kingdom 1800–1986: evidence from analysis of lake sediments. Ensis, London, prepared for the Department of the Environment.Google Scholar
9.Batterbee, R. W. (1978) Observations on the recent history of Lough Neagh and its drainage basin. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London [B] 281, 303–345.Google Scholar
10.Ruddiman, W. F. (1977) Investigations of Quaternary climate based on planktonic foraminifera. In Oceanic Micropaleontology, Ramsay, A. T. S. (Ed) Academic Press, New York101–161.Google Scholar
11.Coope, G. R. (1977) Quaternary coleoptera as aids in the interpretation of environmental history. In British Quaternary Studies, recent advances. Shotton, F. W. (Ed.). Clarendon Press, Oxford, 55–68.Google Scholar
12.GRIP Project Members (1993) Climate instability during the last interglacial period recorded in the GRIP ice core. Nature 364, 203–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13.Dansgaard, W., Johnsen, S. J., Clausen, H. B., Dahl-Jensen, D., Gundestrup, N. S., Hammer, C. U., Hvidberg, C. S., Steffensen, J. P., Sveinbjornsdottir, A. E., Jouzel, J. and Bond, G. (1993) Evidence for general instability of past climate from a 250-kyr ice-core record. Nature 364, 218–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14.Taylor, K. C., Lamorey, G. W., Doyle, G. A., Alley, R. B., Grootes, P. M., Mayewski, P. A., White, J. W. C. and Barlow, L. K. (1993) The ‘flickering switch’ of late Pleistocene climate change. Nature 361, 432–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15.Baillie, M. G. L. (1982) Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology. Croom Helm, London and Canberra. 274 pp.Google Scholar
16.Schweingruber, F. H. (1989) Tree Rings. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
17.Lamarche, V. C. Jr. (1973) Holocene climate variations inferred from tree-line fluctuations in the White Mountains, California. Quaternary Res. 3, 632–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Briffa, K. R., Bartholin, T. S., Eckstein, D., Jones, P. D., Karlen, W., Schweingruber, F. H. and Zetterberg, P. (1990) A 1,400-year tree-ring record of summer temperatures in Fennoscandia. Nature 346, 434–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Robinson, W. J. (1976) Tree-ring dating and archaeology in the American Southwest. Tree-Ring Bull. 36, 9–20.Google Scholar
20.Cook, E. R. and Kairiukstis, L. A. (1990) Methods of Dendrochronology. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Baillie, M. G. L. and Munro, M. A. R. (1988) Irish tree rings, Santorini and volcanic dust veils. Nature 332, 344–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22.Pilcher, J. R. and Hall, V. A. (1992) Towards a tephrochronology for the Holocene of the north of Ireland. The Holocene 2, 264–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23.Smith, A. G. (1965) Problems of inertia and threshold related to post-Glacial habitat changes. Proc. Roy. Soc. B, 161, 331–342.Google Scholar