Palaeogeography of late glacial vegetation: aspects of late glacial and early Holocene vegetation, abiotic landscape, and climate in The Netherlands

The Weichselian Late glacial is the transition period between two metastable conditions, that of the last Glacial and that of the present Interglacial and can be placed in time between 13 000 and 10 000 ¹⁴C-yr BP (Mangerud et al., 1974). The modelling of vegetation, environment and climate during ghis time-interval, with very dynamic (rapid changing) conditions has its problems, especially because it is difficult to find modern analogue proxy-data for the essentially instable systems of the Late glacial. The Late glacial has been studied frequently by means of palynology, therefore reconstructions of the Late glacial vegetation and climate have frequently been made. However, palynological investigations on Quaternary climates are in particular directed to single sites. Stratigraphical, palaeoclimatological and palaeoecological conslusions therefore are related to the immediate surroundings of such sites. Comparison with other sites is in practice mainly aimed at comparison of stratigraphic and ecological similarities, eg, Berglund et al. (1996). The influence of abiotic components of the Late glacial landscape on the vegetation development is poorly known. Major changes in the vegetation will have been the result of climatic changes but vegetation and, more specific, patterns in vegetation have been largely influenced by the abiotic landscape. Environmental reconstructions and ecological interpretations must be considered simultaneously if the diverse patterns observable in biostratigraphy are to be understood in terms of causal processes (see also Birks, 1986). A palaeogeographical approach can give an additional, independent solution to these problems. Palaeogeography can be applied if a substantial number of well-dated sites over a geographically large area are available. This study emphasizes the importance of a better understanding of the functioning of the Late glacial environment, based on a multi-disciplinary palaeogeographicsl approach. Divided into two parts, the Late glacial natural history of The Netherlands is reviewed. In the first part, aspects of the Late glacial and Early Holocene vegetation, abiotic landscape and climate in The Netherlands are discussed. In this par, divided into seven chapters, a critical evaluation is presented considering the relationships between climate, the abiotic landscape and the vegetation development in The Netherlands during the Late glacial and Early Holocene. Several chapters have been prepared for publication in international journals. The second part consists of an atlas of the Late glacial and Early Holocene landscape and vegetation in The Netherlands, together with an extensive review of available playnological data. Landscape and pollen distribution maps of (selected) plant taxa for different time-windows during the Late glavial and Early Holocene in The Netherlands are presented. Isopollen maps and pollen abundance maps show the changes in vegetation composition and patterns in time and space. A selection of pollen diagrams from different regions with selected species is added. The review of the Late glacial and Early Holocene pollen diagrams in the Netherlands and adjacent regions gives a compilation of over 500 pollen diagrams from the period under consideration. This atlas with review of the available palynological data will be published separately.