Data from: Ornithogenic vegetation: How significant has the seabird influence been on the Aleutian Island vegetation during the Holocene? ...

• Main Authors: Smyshlyaeva, Olesya, Severova, Elena, Krylovich, Olga, Kuzmicheva, Evgeniya, Savinetsky, Arkady, West, Dixie, Hatfield, Virginia
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2021
• Subjects: FOS Natural sciences; Guano; McDonald Point; Near Islands; Shemya Island; Aleutian Island; Tundra; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0rxwdbs1f; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.0rxwdbs1f

In the Aleutian Islands during the Holocene, terrestrial predators were actually absent; as a result, large seabird colonies thrived along the coasts or across entire islands. Bird guano enriches the soil with nitrogen, which can lead to the formation of highly modified ornithogenic (bird-formed) ecosystems. For a more detailed investigation of avian influence, we reconstructed more than 10,000-year-old vegetation dynamics of the coast of Shemya Island (Near Islands) by pollen analysis. At the initial stages of vegetation development (10,000-4,600 cal yr BP), sedge-heather tundra grew in the studied area. A seabird colony existed on Shemya from 4,600 to 2,400 cal yr BP according to stable isotope analysis. During a period of at least 2,200-years nitrogen enrichment led to the development of ornithogenic herb meadows with a high presence of Apiaceae. A long-term increase in δ15N above 9-10‰ led to radical shifts in vegetation. Noticeable reduction of seabird colonies due to human hunting led to grass-meadows ... : This zip directory contains raw pollen cound data, pollen concentration data, description of samples, , and isotopic (13C, 15N) + LOI data: mcdonald_data.zip In file 'McDonald Point (Shemya Aleutian Islands) isotopes LOI Pollen Influx.xlsx' missing values are marked with N / A. This zip directory contains complete pollen percentage and concentration diagrams in tiff format as figure: mcdonald_figures.zip ...