Patterns of Late Glacial vegetation in the Netherlands

Abstract

The Weichselian Late Glacial (ca. 13,000-10,000 years BP) marks the transition from the cold Weichsel Late Pleniglacial to the warmer Holocene. During this period the climate rapidly changed as did the vegetation and the abiotic landscape. The vegetational development of the Weichselian Late Glacial in The Netherlands is determined firstly by the large-scale changes in climate and in the second place by local variations in lithology, geomorphology and hydrology. Pollen diagrams from different areas, embracing the same time-stratigraphical interval, often show clear variations in vegetation history, which can not be explained on climatological grounds alone. In The Netherlands over 400 palynological sections, covering a part or the whole of the Weichselian Late Glacial, have been investigated by several institutes. For the compilation of the data from over 250 pollen diagrams, use was made of the European Pollen Database structure. Dated shifts in the arboreal pollen content constitute the basis of a regional zonation scheme. With the help of this, iso-pollen maps of main taxa were constructed for different time-windows within the Weichselian Late Glacial. The dense network of palynological observation sites in The Netherlands permitted the drafting of high-resolution iso-pollen maps of the period considered. A clear relationship can be recognized between the iso-pollen patterns and the landscape type. Thus, it should be possible to distinguish more clearly between climate and other abiotic agencies of the environment which affected vegetational development.