When the point becomes the area: multivariate and spatial analysis of pollen data

Almost every agricultural activity affects vegetation; these disturbances are recorded in the palynological record of natural archives, such as lakes and mires. A great number of data sets have been elaborated in recent decades, providing detailed and excellent information about vegetation and land use history since Neolithic times. Each of these datasets, however, is restricted to a particular point in the landscape. The project introduced here collects these data in a database and processes them for further spatial analysis. The aim of the project is to develop maps for the intensity of human impact in different landscapes: A diachronous index for the intensity of human impact is derived by canonical correspondence analysis, mapped and displayed spatially. Here the first results of the project for the Rhenish Loessboerde (Western Germany) and the Lake Constance region (Southern Germany) shall be introduced