Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

Jed O. Kaplan, Kristen M. Krumhardt, Marie-José Gaillard, Shinya Sugita, Anna-Kari Trondman, Ralph Fyfe, Laurent Marquer, Florence Mazier and Anne Birgitte Nielsen
Additional contact information
Jed O. Kaplan: Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Kristen M. Krumhardt: Environmental Studies Program and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
Marie-José Gaillard: Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Linnaeus University, 391 82 Kalmar, Sweden
Shinya Sugita: Institute of Ecology, Tallinn University, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia
Anna-Kari Trondman: Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Linnaeus University, 391 82 Kalmar, Sweden
Ralph Fyfe: School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK
Laurent Marquer: Laboratoire Géographie de l’Environnement (GEODE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR-CNRS 5602), Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 31058 Toulouse, France
Florence Mazier: Laboratoire Géographie de l’Environnement (GEODE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR-CNRS 5602), Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 31058 Toulouse, France
Anne Birgitte Nielsen: Department of Geology, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden

Land, 2017, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: Anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) is the most important transformation of the Earth system that occurred in the preindustrial Holocene, with implications for carbon, water and sediment cycles, biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services and regional and global climate. For example, anthropogenic deforestation in preindustrial Eurasia may have led to feedbacks to the climate system: both biogeophysical, regionally amplifying winter cold and summer warm temperatures, and biogeochemical, stabilizing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and thus influencing global climate. Quantification of these effects is difficult, however, because scenarios of anthropogenic land cover change over the Holocene vary widely, with increasing disagreement back in time. Because land cover change had such widespread ramifications for the Earth system, it is essential to assess current ALCC scenarios in light of observations and provide guidance on which models are most realistic. Here, we perform a systematic evaluation of two widely-used ALCC scenarios (KK10 and HYDE3.1) in northern and part of central Europe using an independent, pollen-based reconstruction of Holocene land cover (REVEALS). Considering that ALCC in Europe primarily resulted in deforestation, we compare modeled land use with the cover of non-forest vegetation inferred from the pollen data. Though neither land cover change scenario matches the pollen-based reconstructions precisely, KK10 correlates well with REVEALS at the country scale, while HYDE systematically underestimates land use with increasing magnitude with time in the past. Discrepancies between modeled and reconstructed land use are caused by a number of factors, including assumptions of per-capita land use and socio-cultural factors that cannot be predicted on the basis of the characteristics of the physical environment, including dietary preferences, long-distance trade, the location of urban areas and social organization.

Keywords: land use; paleoecology; environmental history; human-environment interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:6:y:2017:i:4:p:91-:d:123498

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