Modern pollen rain, subantarctic Campbell Island, New Zealand (original) (raw)
Related papers
Modern pollen–vegetation relationships in western Tasmania, Australia
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 2007
This paper describes the results of a modern pollen survey of plant communities in western Tasmania, Australia. Sampled communities occur in the main vegetation types: alpine/subalpine, rainforest and moorland. We show that despite the overrepresentation of rainforest trees in the regional pollen rain, vegetation type and some communities can be distinguished using pollen analysis. Temperature (altitude) and fire frequency are significantly correlated with the ordination axes, consistent with the ecology of the region, indicating that pollen composition is a good reflection of vegetation and that pollen spectra can be effectively used to reconstruct changes in these environmental parameters. Moorland communities are clearly distinguished by ordination analysis. Seasonality is significantly correlated with moorland community type. Although percentage cover of the major plant taxa correlates significantly in most cases with pollen percentages, the high variability means that quantitative estimates of vegetation cover from pollen data alone are not possible.
Modern pollen deposition in the tropical lowlands of northeast Queensland, Australia
Surface sediments of mangrove, freshwater wetland and rainforest sites in northeast Queensland were sampled to obtain pollen signatures from a range of climatic and vegetational settings as a basis for interpretation of fossil pollen diagrams. Maximum terrestrial pollen diversity was predicted by curve fitting using the Putter No. 1 growth curve. Taxonomic diversity was found to be a better indicator of rainfall zone than the presence or absence of any one taxon. However, the presence of Chenopodiaceae pollen and a general lack of rainforest pollen types are characteristic of low-rainfall environments. High values for pteridophytes indicate fluvial conditions, while high-altitude taxa were found in lowland sites fed by streams draining upland vegetation. Local habitat indicators provide good evidence for the type of depositional environment, in keeping with other published studies.
A vegetation history from north-east Nelson, New Zealand
New Zealand Journal of Botany, 1978
A pollen analysis and three radiocarbon dates are reported from Dew Lakes in northern South Island, New Zealand. The results show that a mixed Nothofagus-podocarp forest has existed in the area for the last 10 500 yr B.P. The major change in forest taxa has been a continuing rise in Nothofagus which probably began before 10 500 yr B.P. and peaked at c. 4 800 yr B.P. Podocarpus ferrugineus and Dacrydium cupressinum were present in relatively constant amounts but the Nothofagus rise was accompanied by a decrease in other Podocarpus spp. and shrub taxa. A second major change was a clearance phase and the appearance of Pinus pollen coincident with the arrival of European man. Changes in local taxa show that initially a shallow swamp existed at the site but this became a lake between 8 500 yr B.P. and 100 yr B.P., suggesting a wetter climate since 8 500 yr B.P. than earher. The end of this phase is not clearly represented, because succession in the swamp has led to natural shallowing of the water as evidenced by a return of shallow swamp taxa and shrubs on the peat.The results are discussed in relation to other published pollen diagrams from New Zealand and it is noted that the results fit better with diagrams from the Ruahine Range in southern North Island than with results from South Island sites.
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 1994
Pollen samples from moss polsters and litter were taken from 14 florlstlcally-descnbed ralnforest and marginal ralnforest sites considered to cover a large range of existing environmental variation. One hundred and forty pollen types were Identified of whach only a small number could be related to parent species. However, a number of pollen types had systematic representation in relation to major environmental parameters, and pattern analyses revealed marked similarines in spatial distributions of sites based on pollen and species data. Site ordination demonstrated high correlation between pollen variation and annual and seasonal attributes of chmate as well as soil fertility indicating the potentxal for refining palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from pollen diagrams produced from the region.
Journal of The Royal Society of New Zealand, 1995
Micro-and macrofossil data from the remains of forests overwhelmed and huried at Pureora and Benneydale during the Taupo eruption (c. 1850 conventional radiocarbon yr BP) were compared. Classification of relative abundance data separated the techniques, rather than the locations, because the two primary clusters comprised pollen and litter/ wood. This indicates that the pollen:litter/wood within-site comparisons (Pureora and Benneydale are 20 km apart) are not reliable. Plant macrofossils represented mainly local vegetation, while pollen assemblages represented a combination of local and regional vegetation. However, using ranked abundance and presence/absence data, both macrofossils and pollen at Pureora and Benneydale indicated conifer/broadleaved forest, of similar forest type and species composition at each site. This suggests that the forests destroyed by the eruption were typical of mid-altitude west Taupo forests, and that either data set (pollen or macrofossils) would have been adequate for regional forest interpretation.
Discontinuous late Pleistocene‐Holocene pollen records from Auckland Domain, northern New Zealand
New Zealand Journal of Botany, 2009
Two sediment sequences from Pukekawa crater, Auckland Domain, contain silty clay underlain by fibrous peat. The peat contains a pollen flora and wood indicating the presence of a warm-temperate, conifer-hardwood forest with Metrosideros, Agathis, Prumnopitys taxifolia, P. ferruginea, and especially Dacrydium. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the peat was deposited before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Absence of tephras and small amounts of Fuscospora pollen indicate probable non-preservation of the LGM. The pollen flora of most of the clay contains Metrosideros, Ascarina, and ferns, indicating post-LGM warmer, wetter conditions. The two uppermost samples contain exotic pollen, indicating that they are post-European in origin. Excavation and levelling to form sports fields B09014; Online publication date
New Zealand Journal of Geology and …, 2003
Abstract Terrestrial pollen and spores in late Maastrichtian to early Paleocene marine strata at mid-Waipara, New Zealand, permit reconstruction of contemporary vegetation and paleoclimates. During the latest Cretaceous, spore-pollen assemblages reflect a temperate rainforest with a prominent podocarp and tree ferns component, angiosperm pollen being mainly represented by Nothofagus and Proteaceae. Disruption of the vegetation at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary is recorded by an increase in fern spores, reduction in gymnosperm pollen, and temporary loss of angiosperm pollen both in mid Waipara and in the terrestrial sections of Moody Creek Mine and Compressor Creek. Following an interval of fern dominance, gymnosperms and later angiosperms return to the palynological record. The floral turnover at the K/T boundary is comparable to palynological records from North America and Japan, indicating that disruption of vegetation was global. Fern dominance is estimated to have lasted several thousands of years, based on foraminiferal biostratigraphy of immediate post-K/T boundary strata. This is orders of magnitude greater than seen in normal seral successions following deforestation. We suggest that the observed vegetation succession is due to a prolonged period of low ambient light levels, sufficient for photosynthesis but favouring plants already adapted to these levels (such as forest ground stratum), accompanied by a moderate temperature and moisture regime.
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 2016
The occurrence of terrestrial palynomorphs in Quaternary marine sedimentary sequences allows for direct land-sea correlations and provides a means for transferring Marine Isotope Stage chronologies to terrestrial records that extend beyond the range of radiocarbon dating. Both of these important applications require an implicit assumption that the lag between pollen release and final deposition on the seafloorhere referred to as source-to-sink residence timeis negligible in relation to the chronological resolution of the sedimentary sequence. Most studies implicitly assume zero lag, and where studies do take palynomorph residence time into account, its magnitude is rarely quantified. In Westland, New Zealand, fluvial transport is the main source of delivery of terrestrial pollen offshore to the adjacent East Tasman Sea. We radiocarbon dated organic matter carried and deposited by contemporary Westland rivers that drain catchments with varying degrees of disturbance. The ages obtained ranged widely from essentially modern (i.e.,-57 ± 22 cal yr BP) to 3583±188 cal yr BP, suggesting that precisely constraining the residence time in this region is unlikely to be achieved in this region. We also compared the timing of four palynomorph events characterising Westland's late Pleistocene, along with the well-dated