Projects using EPD data

DYNAmic Models in Terrestrial Ecosystems and Landscapes
A Lund-Liverpool collaboration that will use and support the European Pollen Database
Funding STINT (Sweden)
Leaders: Profs. Snowball (Lund) and Bradshaw (Liverpool)

The consequences of current climatic, land-use and physical landscape changes are of international research and teaching interest. Understanding these changes during the Quaternary period places the present situation in a valuable perspective and aids the refinement of models used to forecast future conditions. The overall objective of DYNAMITE is to understand Quaternary environmental change by combining physical landscape research with ecosystem dynamics to improve models. The objective will be achieved through collaboration between nationally-funded research projects, exchange of researchers, teachers and students and a group of flagship activities that includes a jointly produced book for researchers, teachers and students. Lund and Liverpool have complementary expertise and experience in model development and Quaternary data-model comparison. An exchange programme will open new research areas for both partners and develop international teaching programmes at all levels. Four flagship activities will present DYNAMITE to a wider community:- 1. Joint Lund-Liverpool authorship of a book titled “From the past to the future: understanding long-term vegetational change”. 2. Joint hosting of symposia at European Geophysical Union 2010, International Union for Quaternary Research 2011 and sessions at the Annual General Meeting of the British Society for Geomorphology 2011. 3. Joint hosting of an international data-model workshop using the European Pollen Database and POLLSCAPE model to reconstruct past vegetation patterns. 4. Field-based graduate courses comparing relatively unexploited (Sweden) and exploited (UK) upland environments through time.

Fire management to maintain biodiversity and mitigate economic loss
An ERA-net BIODIVERSA research project with 6 European partners
Leader: Prof. Bradshaw

Fire is a natural disturbance agency of many forest and grassland ecosystems that contributes to species dynamics and diversity, physical structure and ecosystem function. Many European heathland systems owe their origin and maintenance to burning, and fire is a key disturbance agency in both Mediterranean and boreal biomes that impacts the biodiversity of ecosystems, species and genetic structure. Fire-ecosystem relationships are altered by changing climate and earlier European fire regimes are now heavily modified by human activities to generate both biological and socioeconomic problems. Intense or inappropriate fire can wreak enormous damage and following recent extreme fire years in parts of Europe, there is an urgent need for a co-ordinated European policy on fire management. The main aim of FIREMAN is to generate policy guidance and management tools for the appropriate use of fire to foster biodiversity in three major European ecosystems. The project will use European pollen data to compare and map Holocene fire-vegetation relationships. FIREMAN Webpage – http://www.fireman-europe.com

Contact person for the Gerhard-Lang-book project is Brigitta Ammann brigitta.ammann@ips.unibe.ch

The textbook about vegetation history in Europe by Gerhard Lang was published in 1994 in German but is now out of print. Many Quaternary scientists have appreciated the book for its concise text as well as its clear black-and-white figures and maps for selected pollen taxa. A small team (B. Ammann, K.-E. Behre, W. Tinner, W.O. van der Knaap, D. Colombaroli) has now started to work on the up-dated version of the book in English, taking advantage of the European Pollen Database as one of the tools to collect and synthesize data on pollen and plant macrofossils. Many important studies published after the late 1980s are still missing from the EPD, and it would be very helpful to have them available in the EPD for many research projects as well as for the new book. In this book the maps will be a lot simpler than what the group “MADCAP” is planning, but still they should be as complete as possible. We therefore strongly encourage all palynologists from Europe to submit all their relevant pollen data (and macrofossil data if available), to the EPD. This will be of great benefit for every single scientist and for the scientific community because their results will be comparable and organized in a data-base; this is the best way of preserving valuable data (restricted or unrestricted*) that otherwise could get lost or forgotten.

Coordinator: Simon Brewer

A description of the projects of the MADCAP group can be acceessed on the following webpage: http://www.europeanpollendatabase.net/wiki/doku.php?id=group_projects.

Leader VR LANDCLIM : M.J. Gaillard (University of Kalmar, Sweden) Leaders LUCCI: Martin Sykes, Almuth Arneth, Svante Björck and Daniel Conley (University of Lund, Sweden) Leader MERGE: Markku Rummukainen (university of Lund)

Principal responsibles and investigators so far: Anna Broström, Ralph Fyfe, Marie-José Gaillard, Thomas Giesecke, Erik Kjellström, Florence Mazier, Paul Miller, Anne-Brigitte Nielsen, Mats Rundgren, Benjamin Smith, Gustav Strandberg, Shinya Sugita, Anna-Kari Trondman

The European Pollen Database (EPD) will be involved through its manager Michelle Leydet and its Support Groups, in particular MADCAP, Taxonomy and Nomenclature and Chronology.

The VR-LANDCLIM 6000-200 project (LAND cover-CLIMate Interactions in NW Europe 6000 BP and 200 BP: a novel model-data comparison approach) is financed by the Swedish Research Council VR (Vetenskapsrådet) and was launched in January 2009 for a period of three years. It is a collaboration between palaeoecologists/ palynologists (application of the REVEALS model (Sugita, 2007 in the Holocene); quantitative reconstruction of regional vegetation from fossil pollen data), vegetation modellers (LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model; Lund University, Ben Smith, Paul Miller), palaeoclimatologists (synthesis of palaeoclimatic data, Lund and Kalmar universities, Mats Rundgren and collaborators), and climate modellers (SMHI, Swedish Institute of Meteorology, Rossby Research Centre, Sweden; Regional climate model RCA3; Lars Bärring and collaborators)

The major objectives of VR LANDCLIM are as follows: we will reconstruct Holocene land-cover at a regional-continental spatial scale over NW Europe and western Europe north of the Alps (see study area below) using the REVEALS model (Sugita 2007, The Holocene) and pollen data from lakes and bogs. Pollen records from the EPD and other sources will be used to reconstruct Holocene land cover (in % cover) of 35 taxa at the regional spatial scale. All pollen records that we will use and are not currently in the EPD will be submitted to the EPD at the condition that the authors agree. These REVEALS reconstructions will be used in a data-model comparison scheme with the aim to evaluate and refine the vegetation and climate models. The REVEALS land-cover estimates will be compared to the outputs of the dynamic vegetation model LPJ GUESS in order to calibrate the LPJ GUESS model before it is used in regional climate modelling (RCA3 model). The REVEALS reconstructions will also be used separately in the climate modelling. The RCA3 model outputs, either using the vegetation predicted by LPJ-GUESS or the land cover predicted by REVEALS, will be compared with palaeoclimate data.

LUCCI: Holocene land-cover reconstructions are also needed for another project on « Quantitative reconstructions of past land-use and its role in the climate-carbon cycle system » coordinated by Martin Sykes, Almuth Arneth, Svante Björk and Daniel Conley (Lund University, Sweden) and financed by the LUCCI project (http://www.lucci.lu.se/ 2009-2019). The latter project will work on the same time windows as VR-LANDCLIM and two additional ones (3000 BP and 600 BP). The independent data sets of past land cover and vegetation composition will be used to simulate carbon release with the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS in order to compare results with simulated carbon release based on potential vegetation and human induced vegetation inferred from REVEALS. For more information on this project, please contact Florence Mazier (florencemazier@yahoo.fr or florence.mazier@geol.lu.se ) or Anna Broström (anna.brostrom@geol.lu.se).

MERGE (ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system) is a very large research programme that recently got support from the Swedish government. It is based at Lund University and coordinated by Markku Rummukainen. It includes a large number of workpackages of which “Focus 1.2.1. Land cover/land use feedbacks on climate” is led by M.-J. Gaillard. In that part of MERGE, model-data comparison protocols will be set up to evaluate and improve existing vegetation and climate-vegetation models, working initially with the LPJ-GUESS, RCA3, and RCA-GUESS suite of models. The palaeolandscape reconstruction method REVEALS will produce spatially-extensive land-cover maps on ~1?1 km resolution, appropriate for comparison to gridded output from the climate and vegetation models (F1.1.1). Holocene time windows centred on carefully selected phases of contrasting vegetation and human impact scenarios will be analysed through model experiments for land cover-climate feedbacks. The vegetation reconstructions will be used both for evaluation and to constrain land cover fields in climate model runs.

The project VR LANDCLIM and the subprojects within LUCCI and MERGE are also linked to the NordForsk LANDCLIM network (coordinator: M.-J. Gaillard) (see below)

NordForsk LANDCLIM 10 000

Coordinator: M.-J. Gaillard (University of Kalmar)

The NordForsk LANDCLIM 10 000 network is a constellation of 13 research groups from 6 Nordic countries and other European countries (France, Germany, Britain). The Nordic Research Council gives financial support 3 years (2009-2011) for the organization of workshops including travels and accommodation for the participants. The organization of the NordForsk LANDCLIM is open and welcomes new members, i.e. any scientist interested in the topic of the network. The network aims at encouraging collaboration between palaeoecologists, historians, archaeologists, vegetation modellers and climate modellers in order to study climate-vegetation feedbacks in the past, and to develop robust dynamic vegetation models and climate models for future predictions. All collaborators-contributors to the VR-LANDCLIM and to the subproject of LUCCI (see above) are also members of the NordForsk LANDCLIM network. See www.hik.se/pages/9922_1.htm

PLEASE take contact with Prof. M.-J. Gaillard for any further information or to discuss collaboration within VR LANDCLIM or NordForsk LANDCLIM: marie-jose.gaillard-lemdahl@hik.se