Research paper
Study of the modern pollen rain in Western Uganda with a numerical approach

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Abstract

Modern soil samples from Western Uganda, from a range of ten plant communities belonging to five African phytogeographical regions and distributed along an altitudinal gradient from 650 m (grass savannas) to 4400 m (Afroalpine moorland) were analyzed for pollen content to define modern pollen/vegetation relationships. Correspondence analysis applied to the pollen counts (100 sites and 167 taxa) indicates four distinctive vegetation types arranged along an altitudinal gradient and thus a temperature one with respect to axis 1(contrast between montane and lowland vegetations), and along a physiognomical gradient (from densely structured to open vegetations) defined by axis 3. These results confirm the empirical interpretation proposed on the initial pollen data set and are in agreement with those previously obtained on modern or fossil pollen spectra from other African regions.

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