Fine resolution pollen analysis of vegetation history in the Lough Adoon Valley, Co. Kerry, western Ireland

Abstract

The Lough Adoon Valley on the north of the Dingle Peninsula, in southwest Ireland, has been occupied by humans, perhaps continuously, since Neolothic times. Since about 5000 B.P. the valley has been essentially deforested, apart from local reinvasions of Betula, and much of the landscape has been covered by blanket bog and heath. Time series analysis of pollen and charcoal influx from two sections of peat sampled at contiguous 1 cm intervals was carried out to explore the vegetation shifts associated with Betula decline and charcoal dominated phases. Cereal cropping and fire were important vegetational controls resulting in an interplay between heath, wetland, grassland and woodland but forest decline was not a result of fire. The number of pollen taxa interrelationships differed between the phases with a greater number of interrelationships in the Betula decline phase than when fire was more prominent in the environment.