The Late-Glacial and Holocene history of vegetation in the Slovakian West Carpathians: introducing ongoing multi-proxy project and first results
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Popularization text |
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| Description | The knowledge of the long-term, millennial-scale dynamics of particular vegetation types is crucial for deeper understand- ing of vegetation changes under the ongoing global change. Only a low number of palaeoecological studies, which would use modern multi-proxy analyses accompanied by radiocar- bon dating have been conducted in the Slovakian West Carpathians. It holds especially for middle altitudes on lime- stone and volcanic rocks, the landscape which is important biodiversity hot-spot in the West Carpathians whose history was explored only based on fossil molluscs so far. Thus, we attempt to fill an important gap in our knowledge using mod- ern methods and multi-proxy approaches (pollen, testate amoebae, diatoms and macrofossils of molluscs, vascular plants, bryophytes, and chironomids, geochemical analyses, AMS dating). A variety of sedimentary environments are investigated (mires of different mineral richness including travertine fens, lakes and palaeo-meanders), which will con- tribute to a more complete image of vegetation development of the entire Slovak West Carpathians as well as habitat devel- opment of particular types of wetlands. The main aims of our project are: 1)to study Holocene development of vegetation along climatic and altitudinal gradients and among contrast- ing bedrock that differ with respect to acidity and sensitivity to cation leaching; 2)to study spreading of mesophilous trees from the Late Glacial up to present and the role of southern margin of the West Carpathians in the tree migration during the early Holocene; 3)to study influence of human activities from Neolithic up to present times on the vegetation in differ- ent regions and importance of continuity of treeless landscape for present diversity patterns and 4)to study relic fen species (molluscs, bryophytes and vascular plants), their surviving and extinctions through the Holocene. So far, we sampled more than 20 palaeoecological profiles, published some local partial studies. |
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