Surface pollen and its relationship to vegetation in the Zoige Basin, eastern Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

We use a data set of 23 surface pollen samples from moss polsters in the Zoige Basin to explore the relationship between modern pollen assemblages and contemporary vegetation patterns. The surface pollen samples spanned four types of plant communities: Carex muliensis marsh, Stipa and Kobresia meadow, Carex-dominated forb meadow and Sibiraea angustata scrub. Principal-components analysis (PCA) was used to determine the relationships between modern pollen and vegetation and environmental variables. The results show that the pollen assemblages of surface moss samples generally reflect the features of the modern vegetation, basically similar in the vegetation types and the dominant genera; however, they don’t show a very clear distinction between different communities. Our results also demonstrate that pollen representation of different families or genus varied. Some tree taxa, such as Pinus and Betula, and herb types, such as Artemisia are over-represented, while Asteraceae, Ranunculaceae and Cyperaceae are moderately represented, and Poaceae and Rosaceae are usually under-represented in our study region. PCA results indicate that the distribution of vegetation in the Zoige Basin is mainly controlled by precipitation and altitude.

Keywords

modern pollen assemblages / principal- components analysis / Zoige Basin / eastern Tibetan Plateau

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Acknowledgments

We thank Shuo Chen and Jiaju Zhao for field assistance. This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2010CB950202), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41071126 and 41021091), and New Century Talent Program of Ministry of Education (No. NCET-07-0402).

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