Effects of human land use and temperature on community dynamics in European forests

Milligan, Gregg, Bradshaw, Richard ORCID: 0000-0002-7331-2246, Clancy, Damian, Zychaluk, Kamila and Spencer, Matthew (2020) Effects of human land use and temperature on community dynamics in European forests. Quaternary Science Reviews: the international multidisciplinary research and review journal, 247. p. 106458.

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Abstract

Climate change and human land use are thought to play a dominant role in the dynamics of European central-latitude forests in the Holocene. A wide range of mathematical and statistical models have been used to study the effects of these variables on forest dynamics, including physiologically-based simulations and phenomenological community models. However, for statistical analysis of pollen count data, compositional data analysis is particularly well suited, because pollen counts give only relative information. We studied the effects of changes in human land use and temperature on European central-latitude forest dynamics at 7 sites over most of the last , using a stochastic model for compositional dynamics of pollen count data. Our approach has a natural ecological interpretation in terms of relative proportional population growth rates, and does not require information on pollen production, dispersal, or deposition. We showed that the relative proportional population growth rates of Fagus and Picea were positively affected by intensified human land use, and that those of Tilia and Ulmus were negatively affected. Also, the relative proportional population growth rate of Fagus was negatively affected by increases in temperature above about . Overall, the effects of temperature on the rate of change of forest composition were more important than those of human land use. Although there were aspects of dynamics, such as short-term oscillations, that our model did not capture, our approach is broadly applicable and founded on ecological principles, and gave results consistent with current thinking.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Holocene, Europe, Vegetation dynamics, Paleoclimatology, Compositional data analysis, Stochastic differential equations, Land use
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2020 09:19
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2023 23:32
DOI:	10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106458
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106458
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3101532