Pollen-Based Tree Population Dynamics and Climate Reconstruction

Dear Colleagues,

Increasing awareness about climate change and its impacts on biodiversity and environmental sustainability should promote research regarding the structure and dynamics of past ecosystems, as they can provide analogues for our future world and potential mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Plants are sensitive sentinels of climate change, which can lead to shifts in pollen and seed productivity/dispersal/viability, the loss/disruption/expansion of species, interactions and competition. Palaeoecology provides powerful tools for tracing the composition and extent of past forests and their reaction to climate variability. Thousands of palaeobotanical records from every corner of the world shed light on the spatio-temporal dynamics of tree populations and allow their past to be connected with modern ecology and distribution. Before the instrumental measurement of climate parameters, records of plant micro- and macrofossils could be used as quantitative predictors of climate.

By analyzing fossil pollen data, we can reconstruct historical forest compositions and climate conditions. This information is vital for understanding how forests have responded to climate change throughout history, which in turn could enable models to predict future forest dynamics under various climate scenarios, thus guiding forest management practices and promoting the development of adaptation strategies. For example, knowledge of how certain tree species thrived under past climate conditions can guide the selection of species for reforestation projects that are more likely to withstand future changes in the climate changes. Effective forest management practices, informed by historical data, can optimize carbon sequestration. By maintaining and restoring forest ecosystems that are effective carbon sinks, we can mitigate some of the effects of climate change. This involves practices such as controlled burns, thinning, and the management of tree species to enhance forest health and carbon storage.

This Special Issue welcomes high-quality contributions addressing the use of fossil plant records to:

1. Trace the biogeography of trees during geological and recent times, driven by natural or anthropogenic forces.
2. Examine past and current biodiversity changes in different ecoclimatic and biogeographical regions.
3. Utilize fossil pollen spectra for quantitative reconstructions of past climate parameters.
4. Highlight how lessons learned from past ecosystems can inform strategies to help current and future forests adapt to climate change.

By connecting past ecological data with contemporary and future forest management, this Special Issue aims to foster research that bridges palaeoecology with practical applications for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Dr. Federico Di Rita
Dr. Roberta Pini
Guest Editors

Dr. Fabrizio Michelangeli
Dr. Juan Ochando Tomás
Co-Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• biodiversity
• population dynamics
• biogeography
• climate
• paleoecology
• pollen
• quaternary