Peat initiation in the Faroe Islands:climate change, pedogenesis or human impact?

As an isolated island group lying off the NW. European mainland which was uninhabited until the mid-first millennium AD, the Farces offer a unique opportunity to study natural processes of Holocene ecosystem development in a region where anthropogenic activity is usually a complicating factor. In th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Main Authors: Lawson, Ian T., Church, Mike J., Edwards, Kevin J., Cook, Gordon T., Dugmore, Andrew J.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2007
Subjects:
Blanket peat
Holocene
Norse
Pollen
Radiocarbon
Blanket mire formation
Human settlement
Radiocarbon calibration
Lateral expansion
Landscape change
Western Norway
Early holocene
Vegetation
Sediments
Norway
Sandoy
Faroes
Online Access:https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/peat-initiation-in-the-faroe-islands(78fa1664-e101-494f-a785-fde6ef22f1de).html
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755691007000035
https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/10023/5982/1/Lawson_et_al_TRSE_ms_FINAL.pdf
Description
Summary:As an isolated island group lying off the NW. European mainland which was uninhabited until the mid-first millennium AD, the Farces offer a unique opportunity to study natural processes of Holocene ecosystem development in a region where anthropogenic activity is usually a complicating factor. In this paper new radiocarbon dates and pollen-analytical data from the island of Sandoy, in the centre of the Farces archipelago, are presented. Together with existing pollen and plant macrofossil records, these data allow a reconstruction of patterns of Holocene vegetational and edaphic change. Basal peat dates indicate that large areas of blanket mire were established long before the first human settlement, demonstrating conclusively that human impact is not necessary for the development of such ecosystems. The timing of the initiation of the blanket peats varies markedly, both across the Faroes as a whole and at a landscape scale, with dates distributed evenly over 9000 years. This suggests that, in the Faroes at least, pedogenesis was more important than climatic change in determining the timing of the spread of blanket peat systems.

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