https://www.wsl.ch/staff/niklaus.zimmermann/papers/QuatSciRev_Kaplan_2009.pdf

The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe

Humans have altered the Earth’s land surface since the Paleolithic mainly by clearing woody vegetation first to improve hunting and gathering opportunities, and later to provide agricultural cropland. In the Holocene, agriculture was established on nearly all continents and led to widespread modification of terrestrial ecosystems. To quantify the role that humans played in the global carbon cycle over the Holocene, we developed a new, annually resolved inventory of anthropogenic land cover change from 8000 years ago to the beginning of large-scale industrialization (ad 1850). This inventory is based on a simple relationship between population and land use observed in several European countries over preindustrial time. Using this data set, and an alternative scenario based on the HYDE 3.1 land use data base, we forced the LPJ DGVM in a series of continuous simulations to evaluate the impacts of ALCC on terrestrial carbon storage during the preindustrial Holocene. Our model setup allowed us to quantify the importance of land degradation caused by repeated episodes of land use followed by abandonment. By 3 ka BP, cumulative carbon emissions caused by anthropogenic land cover change in our new scenario ranged between 84 and 102 Pg, translating to c. 7 ppm of atmospheric CO2. By ad 1850, emissions were 325–357 Pg in the new scenario, in contrast to 137–189 Pg when driven by HYDE. Regional events that resulted in local emissions or uptake of carbon were often balanced by contrasting patterns in other parts of the world. While we cannot close the carbon budget in the current study, simulated cumulative anthropogenic emissions over the preindustrial Holocene are consistent with the ice core record of atmospheric d13CO2 and support the hypothesis that anthropogenic activities led to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level that made the world substantially warmer than it otherwise would be.

/pdf/holocene-carbon-emissions-as-a-result-of-anthropogenic-land-13lfmq4477.pdf

Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropogenic land cover change

Information on the spatial distribution of past vegetation on local, regional and global scales is increasingly used within climate modelling, nature conservancy and archaeology. It is possible to obtain such information from fossil pollen records in lakes and bogs using the landscape reconstruction algorithm (LRA) and its two models, REVEALS and LOVE. These models assume that reliable pollen productivity estimates (PPEs) are available for the plant taxa involved in the quantitative reconstructions of past vegetation, and that PPEs are constant through time. This paper presents and discusses the PPEs for 15 tree and 18 herb taxa obtained in nine study areas of Europe. Observed differences in PPEs between regions may be explained by methodological issues and environmental variables, of which climate and related factors such as reproduction strategies and growth forms appear to be the most important. An evaluation of the PPEs at hand so far suggests that they can be used in modelling applications and quantitative reconstructions of past vegetation, provided that consideration of past environmental variability within the region is used to inform selection of PPEs, and bearing in mind that PPEs might have changed through time as a response to climate change. Application of a range of possible PPEs will allow a better evaluation of the results.

/pdf/pollen-productivity-estimates-of-key-european-plant-taxa-for-2gjsofnwm3.pdf

Pollen productivity estimates of key European plant taxa for quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation: a review

The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites), to infer long-term records of past land-cover from pollen data, (3) to present a new project (LANDCLIM: LAND cover - CLIMate interactions in NW Europe during the Holocene) currently underway, and show preliminary results of REVEALS reconstructions of the regional land-cover in the Czech Republic for five selected time windows of the Holocene, and (4) to discuss the implications and future directions in climate and vegetation/land-cover modeling, and in the assessment of the effects of human-induced changes in land-cover on the regional climate through altered feedbacks. The existing ALCC scenarios show large discrepancies between them, and few cover time periods older than AD 800. When these scenarios are used to assess the impact of human land-use on climate, contrasting results are obtained. It emphasizes the need for methods such as the REVEALS model-based land-cover reconstructions. They might help to fine-tune descriptions of past land-cover and lead to a better understanding of how long-term changes in ALCC might have influenced climate. The REVEALS model is demonstrated to provide better estimates of the regional vegetation/land-cover changes than the traditional use of pollen percentages. This will achieve a robust assessment of land cover at regional- to continental-spatial scale throughout the Holocene. We present maps of REVEALS estimates for the percentage cover of 10 plant functional types (PFTs) at 200 BP and 6000 BP, and of the two open-land PFTs 'grassland' and 'agricultural land' at five time-windows from 6000 BP to recent time. The LANDCLIM results are expected to provide crucial data to reassess ALCC estimates for a better understanding of the land suface-atmosphere interactions.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00961642/document

Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks

We consider the long-term relationship between human demography, food production, and Holocene climate via an archaeological radiocarbon date series of unprecedented sampling density and detail. There is striking consistency in the inferred human population dynamics across different regions of Britain and Ireland during the middle and later Holocene. Major cross-regional population downturns in population coincide with episodes of more abrupt change in North Atlantic climate and witness societal responses in food procurement as visible in directly dated plants and animals, often with moves toward hardier cereals, increased pastoralism, and/or gathered resources. For the Neolithic, this evidence questions existing models of wholly endogenous demographic boom–bust. For the wider Holocene, it demonstrates that climate-related disruptions have been quasi-periodic drivers of societal and subsistence change.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/49/E10524.full.pdf

Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate.

The REVEALS model was developed to reconstruct quantitatively regional vegetation abundance (in a 10(4)-10(5) km(2) area) from pollen assemblages in large lakes (>= 100-500 ha). This model corrects for biases in pollen percentages caused by inter-taxonomic differences in pollen productivity and dispersal. This paper presents the first case study to validate REVEALS, using empirical data from southern Sweden. Percentage cover of modern regional vegetation in Skane and Smaland, two contrasting vegetation regions, was predicted with REVEALS for 26 key taxa, using pollen assemblages from surface sediments in 10 large lakes, and compared to the actual vegetation within 10(4) km(2) compiled from satellite data, forestry inventories, crop statistics, aerial photographs, and vegetation inventories. REVEALS works well in predicting the percentage cover of large vegetation units such as total trees (wooded land), total herbs (open land), total conifers and total broad-leaved trees, and it provides reasonable estimates for individual taxa, including Pinus, Picea, Betula, Corylus, Alnus, Tilia, Sahx spp., Juniperus, Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Cerealia and Secale. The results show great potential for REVEALS applications, including (1) quantitative reconstructions of past regional land cover important for palaeoclimatology and nature conservation, and (2) local-scale reconstruction of vegetation (<1 km(2) up to similar to 5 km(2) area) relevant for palaeoecology and archaeology. (Less)

The REVEALS model, a new tool to estimate past regional plant abundance from pollen data in large lakes: validation in southern Sweden

Model-based reconstruction of vegetation and landscape using fossil pollen – implications for the interpretation of landscape openness and the role of climate change and human impacts.

We present the theoretical basis and applications of the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA), a novel two-step framework of quantitative reconstruction of vegetation and landscape based on an up-to-dated theory of pollen analysis. The LRA uses the REVEALS model to estimate the regional vegetation composition using pollen from multiple sites ≥1-5 × 102 ha; the LOVE model calculates background pollen and incorporates it into reconstruction of relative vegetation abundance within the relevant source area of pollen for smaller sites <102 ha. Extensive simulations and modern validation studies in Skane and Smaland, southern Sweden, show that the LRA can provide accurate estimates of vegetation abundance by correcting for both the non-linear nature of the relationship between pollen percentages and the surrounding vegetation, and the differences in background pollen. Preliminary results suggest that human impacts on land cover were much more profound in southern Sweden than the pollen percentages alone would suggest.

/pdf/model-based-reconstruction-of-vegetation-and-landscape-using-2sdmisae3r.pdf

Model-based reconstruction of vegetation and landscape using fossil pollen

Quantitative reconstruction of regional plant cover using pollen records from large lakes - validation of the REVEALS model in southern Sweden

Relevant source area of pollen (RSAP) in past cultural landscapes of southern Sweden using a simulation approach

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