Reliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucialto improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effectsof... Show moreReliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucialto improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effectsof environmental variables and land-use change on ecosystems and biodiversity, and mitigatingtheir effects in the future. We present here the most spatially extensive and temporally continuouspollen-based reconstructions of plant cover in Europe (at a spatial resolution of 1 1) over theHolocene (last 11.7 ka BP) using the ‘Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites’(REVEALS) model. This study has three main aims. First, to present the most accurate and reliablegeneration of REVEALS reconstructions across Europe so far. This has been achieved by including alarger number of pollen records compared to former analyses, in particular from the Mediterraneanarea. Second, to discuss methodological issues in the quantification of past land cover by usingalternative datasets of relative pollen productivities (RPPs), one of the key input parameters ofREVEALS, to test model sensitivity. Finally, to validate our reconstructions with the global forestchange dataset. The results suggest that the RPPs.st1 (31 taxa) dataset is best suited to producingregional vegetation cover estimates for Europe. These reconstructions offer a long-term perspectiveproviding unique possibilities to explore spatial-temporal changes in past land cover and biodiversity. Show less
