Theory of quantitative reconstruction of vegetation I: pollen from large sites REVEALS regional vegetation composition

Quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation is one of the primary goals in Quaternary palynology and palaeoecology but still remains difficult. This paper proposes a model, REVEALS, that estimates regional vegetation composition using pollen from ‘large lakes’ that have small site-to-site variations of pollen assemblages even if vegetation is highly heterogeneous. Once these data have been used to quantify regional vegetation composition within 10 4 -10 5 km 2 , background pollen, one of the parameters crucial for vegetation reconstruction, can be estimated for smaller-sized sites, and incorporated into the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA), a multistep framework for quantitative reconstruction of…