Vegetation history

The analysis of vegetation history is one of the prime objectives for vegetation scientists. In order to understand the recent composition of local floras and plant communities a second knowledge of species com position during recent millenia is essential. With the present concern over climate changes, due to human activities, an understanding of past vegeta tion distribution becomes even more important, since the correlation between climate and vegetation can often be used to predict possible impacts to crops and forests. I was very fortunate to receive the help of Drs. Webb and Huntley to compile this volume on vegetation history. They have collated an impres sive set of papers which together give an account of the vegetation history of most of the continents during the late-Tertiary and Quaternery periods. There are, however, gaps in the coverage achieved, most notably Africa, and Asia apart from Japan. The information in this book will nonetheless certainly be used widely by vegetation scientists for the regions covered in the book and much of it has relevance to the areas not explicitly described. The authors of the individual chapters have done their best to cover recent topics of interest as well as established facts. It is intended that a separate volume will be produced in the near future covering the vegetation history of Africa and Asia. I thank the editors of It fits well into the this volume for their commendable achievement.

Résumé
`This volume should become a standard textbook for any type of vegetation scientist, biographer, and evolutionary biologist, student and teacher alike. Paleoecologists will find it equally worthwhile for its concise and state-of-the-art introduction into principles of palynology, and for its specific regional overviews.'
V. Markgraf, Arctic and Alpine Research, 21:4
`The book should be made available as widely as possible to students and to their teachers. It may then help to contribute in some measure to providing an alternative set of empirical models to be ranged against the insane star-wars optimism of the current and proposed climate and IGBP models which, like the medlar, will be 'rotten before they are half ripe'. This is no laughing matter. Our children's lives may be at stake.'
Journal of Biogeography, 17:6, 1990

Contenu
Preface.- List Of Contributors.- Acknowledgements.- Section I: Background and Methods.- I.1 Ancient permanent plots: Sampling in paleovegetational studies.- I.2 Records of vegetation in time and space: the principles of pollen analysis.- I.3 Data analysis and display.- I.4 Time-scales and dating.- I.5 Late-Tertiary and Quaternary palaeoenvironments.- Section II: Late-Tertiary and Pleistocene Vegetation History 20 My To 20 Ky.- II.1 Europe.- II.2 North America.- II.3 Australasia.- II.4 South America.- Section III: Glacial and Holocene Vegetation History 20 Ky to Present.- III.1 Europe.- III. 2 Eastern North America.- III. 3 Western North America.- III.4 Japan.- III.5 The Arctic.- III.6 New Zealand.- Section IV: Smaller-Scale Studies.- IV.1 Fire and disease history of forests.- IV.2 The role of man in European vegetation history.- IV.3 Human disturbance of North American forests and grasslands: the fossil pollen record.- IV.4 Post-glacial vegetation history: Ecological considerations.- IV.5 Spatially-precise studies of forest dynamics.- IV.6 Temporally-precise studies of vegetation history.- Discussion.