Changing patterns in the Holocene pollen record of
Northeastern America: a mapped summary
Paper by J. Christopher Bernabo and Thompson Webb III
Foreword by Jack Williams | Blog by
Tanner Hawkins
J. Christopher Bernabo is a member of Science and Policy Associates.
Thompson Webb III is a
professor emeritus of Geological Sciences at Brown University, studying climate
and plant community dynamics.
Jack Williams is a
researcher at the University of Wisconsin whose research includes vegetation
dynamics and quaternary paleoecology.
Plant communities play an important role in shaping
ecosystems and landscapes. If we were able to understand how those communities
have changed over time, we would have a lot more insight on the natural history
of these ecosystems. The problem is, that while pollen records are generally
pretty good, sorting through cores is very time-intensive. For an individual
researcher or research group, there’s only so much that can be done.
This paper is important historically for many reasons, one
of them being that it was an early “big” dataset, i.e. it incorporated data
shared by several researchers, allowing Bernabo and Webb to make incredibly
precise maps. Effectively, they mapped out the entire holocene from 11000 ybp
to the present, for the entire American Northeast. Webb used that information,
along with his training as a meteorologist, to show emergent changes in the
plant communities and the formation of modern ecotones.
So, was the main purpose of this paper to show how large data sets can be effectively utilized for macroecological research?
ReplyDeleteI knew I was reading an older paper when there was that segment about the data from each site being stored in computer files!
ReplyDeleteInteresting to thinking about the shifts in vegetation communities over time and the patterns and how this relates to climate (as well as our assignment!).