16 History of afforestation in the Nordic countries Vegetation history
The last late glacial from 22,000 up until just before 13,000 years ago was very cold and dry throughout Europe. Large ice sheets were present over much of northern Europe, and ice caps covered the Alps and the Pyrenees. Forest and woodland were almost non-existent, except for isolated areas of wood...
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.518.3757 http://www.skogoglandskap.no/filearchive/history_afforestation_nordic_countries.pdf |
| Summary: | The last late glacial from 22,000 up until just before 13,000 years ago was very cold and dry throughout Europe. Large ice sheets were present over much of northern Europe, and ice caps covered the Alps and the Pyrenees. Forest and woodland were almost non-existent, except for isolated areas of woodland vegetation and close to the mountain ranges of southern Eu-rope. Instead, a sparse grassland or semi-desert covered most of south-ern Europe, at the same time as a mixture of the dry, open steppe tundra and polar desert covered the parts of northern Europe not occupied by ice sheets (Figure 1). Ice-wedge geomorphological features suggest that perma-frost extended across most of Europe, down to about the latitude of central France. At this time drifting sand and wind erosion were common in north and central Europe. At the glacial maximum in Fennoscandia, only the south-western part of Jutland was ice free and a large part of what is today the North Sea was dry land connecting Jutland with Britain. The ice sheets also covered the |
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