The March Towards the Quantitative Analysis of Palaeolimnological Data

Abstract

We outline the aims of palaeolimnology and describe the major types of palaeolimnological data. The distinction between biological data derived from stratigraphical studies of cores and modern surface-sediment samples with environmental data is discussed. A brief history of the development of quantitative palaeolimnology is presented, starting with early applications of principal component analysis in 1975. Major developments occurred in the late 1980s, thanks to the work of Cajo ter Braak and others. The structure of the book in terms of four parts is explained. Part I is introductory and presents an overview of numerical methods and of the data-sets used. Part II presents numerical approaches appropriate to the analysis of modern and stratigraphical palaeolimnological data. Part III considers numerical techniques that are only applicable to stratigraphical data, and Part IV presents three case-studies and concludes with a discussion of future challenges.