Relative pollen productivity estimates of major plant taxa and relevant source area of pollen in the warm-temperate forest landscape of northern China

Abstract

Relative pollen productivity (RPP) is critical for quantitative vegetation reconstruction of past vegetation cover. The Extended R-value (ERV) model is commonly used for estimating RPP. In this study, we used modern pollen assemblages from 30 randomly selected surface sample sites, and these and vegetation data were applied to an ERV model to estimate pollen productivity of Pinus, Quercus, Corylus, Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae, Asteraceae and Caryophyllaceae relative to Poaceae. Estimates of the relevant source area of pollen (RSAP) was also obtained. Three different ERV sub-models were operated against the data. Sub-model 1 produced the best goodness of fit for the data and the RPP values estimated with this sub-model show that the highest producer among arboreal pollen taxa is Pinus (12.85 ± 1.26) and among the herb pollen taxa is Caryophyllaceae (7.28 ± 0.14). The results of ERV analysis suggest that RSAP in surface samples is ca. 400 m.