Abstract
The pollen/vegetation relationship in broadleaved forests dominated by Castanea sativa was analysed using an empirical approach. The pollen content of surface sediments of three lake basins of different sizes (6.3, 22.2, and 101.2 ha) in Ticino (southern Switzerland) was used for a comparison with the surrounding vegetation. We surveyed the vegetation around the two small lakes, Lago di Origlio and Lago di Muzzano, and estimated the relative crown coverage of tree species. The regional vegetation outside the lake catchment (ca. >1 km) was determined with the data from the first Swiss National Forest Inventory. For the third large lake, basin of Ponte Tresa, we used only this latter approach for comparison with pollen data. We compare uncorrected and corrected pollen percentages with vegetational data that were processed with distance-weighting functions. To assess the degree of correspondence between pollen and vegetation data we define a ratio pollen/vegetation, which allows a comparison at the taxon level. The best fit between total pollen load and vegetation is reached for a distance from the lake shore of ca. 300 m for Lago di Origlio (150×350 m in size) and of ca. 600 m for Lago di Muzzano (300×750 m in size). Beside these general patterns, our analysis reveals taxon-specific pollen dispersal patterns that are in agreement with results from previous studies in northern Europe. Ratios of species with local (proximal) and long-distance (distal) pollen dispersal provide evidence that pollen dispersal mechanisms can influence the size of the taxon-related pollen source area, from small (100–400 m) to large (>5 km) for the same lake. The proportion of distal species increases with increasing lake size, highlighting the predominance of atmospheric pollen transport. We conclude that the large species-related differences in pollen source areas have to be taken into account when the provenance at a site is estimated and discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to Brigitta Ammann who introduced us to the potentiality and the power of the palynological approach. The collaboration between the WSL in Bellinzona and the group of Brigitta in Bern date back to May 1992. Since then, a great amount of knowledge on the long-term fire history and the fire ecology of the Southern Alps has been acquired. This paper is just an additional contribution in the frame of this fruitful joint venture.
Our heart-felt thanks go to B. Pezzatti and P. Krebs for technical support, to H. E. Wright Jr. for linguistic improvements and to A. B. Nielsen and Pim van der Knaap for critical revision of the manuscript. C. Ohlendorf, M. Guggisberg, A. F. Lotter, and B. Ammann are gratefully acknowledged for coring, sampling, pollen analysis, and chronological data of Ponte Tresa. We thank Pro Natura Ticino and the communities of Origlio and Muzzano for the permissions for coring at Lago di Muzzano and Lago di Origlio.
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Conedera, M., Tinner, W., Crameri, S. et al. Taxon-related pollen source areas for lake basins in the southern Alps: an empirical approach. Veget Hist Archaeobot 15, 263–272 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0056-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0056-8