Region-Specific Sensitivity of Anemophilous Pollen Deposition to Temperature and Precipitation

• Main Authors: Timme H Donders, Kimberley Hagemans, Stefan C Dekker, Letty A de Weger, Pim de Klerk, Friederike Wagner-Cremer
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104774; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104774&type=printable

Understanding relations between climate and pollen production is important for several societal and ecological challenges, importantly pollen forecasting for pollinosis treatment, forensic studies, global change biology, and high-resolution palaeoecological studies of past vegetation and climate fluctuations. For these purposes, we investigate the role of climate variables on annual-scale variations in pollen influx, test the regional consistency of observed patterns, and evaluate the potential to reconstruct high-frequency signals from sediment archives. A 43-year pollen-trap record from the Netherlands is used to investigate relations between annual pollen influx, climate variables (monthly and seasonal temperature and precipitation values), and the North Atlantic Oscillation climate index. Spearman rank correlation analysis shows that specifically in Alnus, Betula, Corylus, Fraxinus, Quercus and Plantago both temperature in the year prior to (T-1), as well as in the growing season (T), are highly significant factors (TApril rs between 0.30 [P