Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (30)

Trait-based approaches as ecological time machines: Developing tools for reconstructing long-term variation in ecosystems (2023)
Journal Article
Brown, K. A., Bunting, M. J., Carvalho, F., de Bello, F., Mander, L., Marcisz, K., …Svenning, J. C. (2023). Trait-based approaches as ecological time machines: Developing tools for reconstructing long-term variation in ecosystems. Functional ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.14415

Research over the past decade has shown that quantifying spatial variation in ecosystem properties is an effective approach to investigating the effects of environmental change on ecosystems. Yet, current consensus among scientists is that we need a... Read More about Trait-based approaches as ecological time machines: Developing tools for reconstructing long-term variation in ecosystems.

Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney (2022)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., Farrell, M., Dunbar, E., Reimer, P., Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., & Whittle, A. (2022). Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney. Journal of world prehistory, 35(1), 87-107. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-022-09166-y

Neolithic occupation of the Orkney Islands, in the north of Scotland, probably began in the mid fourth millennium cal BC, culminating in a range of settlements, including stone-built houses, varied stone-built tombs and two noteworthy stone circles.... Read More about Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney.

Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains (2022)
Journal Article
Knight, C. A., Anderson, L., Bunting, M. J., Champagne, M., Clayburn, R. M., Crawford, J. N., …Battles, J. J. (2022). Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(12), Article e2116264119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116264119

For millennia, forest ecosystems in California have been shaped by fire from both natural processes and Indigenous land management, but the notion of climatic variation as a primary controller of the pre-colonial landscape remains pervasive. Understa... Read More about Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains.

Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands? (2022)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., & Farrell, M. (in press). Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands?. Frontiers in ecology and evolution, 10, Article 787345. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.787345

Relative Pollen Productivity is an essential parameter for quantitative reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records, but published studies have produced a range of different values for the same taxa. Heathland habitats have limited plant di... Read More about Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands?.

Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China (2021)
Journal Article
Fang, Y., Bunting, M. J., Ma, C., & Yang, X. (2022). Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China. CATENA, 209(1), Article 105790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2021.105790

This study investigated the pollen spectra from 46 pairs of soil and moss samples (pairs collected within a 1 m2 squared area). The samples were collected from six common subtropical vegetation communities in the Meiling Mountains, southeast China, w... Read More about Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China.

Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale (2021)
Journal Article
Macgregor, C. J., Bunting, M. J., Deutz, P., Bourn, N. A., Roy, D. B., & Mayes, W. M. (2022). Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale. The Science of the total environment, 804, Article 150162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150162

Repurposing of brownfield sites is often promoted, because it is perceived that protecting the “green belt” limits damage to biodiversity; yet brownfield sites provide scarce habitats with limited disturbance, so conversely are also perceived to be e... Read More about Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale.

Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA (2021)
Journal Article
Knight, C., Baskaran, M., Bunting, M. J., Champagne, M., Potts, M., Wahl, D., …Battles, J. (2021). Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA. Holocene, 31(5), 814-829. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683620988038

Quantitative reconstructions of vegetation abundance from sediment-derived pollen systems provide unique insights into past ecological conditions. Recently, the use of pollen accumulation rates (PAR, grains cm−2 year−1) has shown promise as a bioprox... Read More about Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA.

Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau (2019)
Journal Article
Qin, F., Bunting, M. J., Zhao, Y., Li, Q., Cui, Q., & Ren, W. (2020). Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 29(4), 447-462. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-019-00751-4

A promising method of reconstructing past vegetation from pollen records uses mathematical models of the relationship between pollen and vegetation. These can be calibrated using the extended R-value (ERV) approach on datasets of modern pollen assemb... Read More about Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau.

Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors (2019)
Journal Article
Farrell, M., Bunting, M. J., Sturt, F., Grant, M., Aalbersberg, G., Batchelor, R., …Whittle, A. (2020). Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 27(2), 271-301. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09427-9

© 2019, The Author(s). Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertaint... Read More about Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors.

Novel methods of estimating relative pollen productivity; a key parameter for reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records (2019)
Journal Article
Fang, Y., Ma, C., & Bunting, M. J. (2019). Novel methods of estimating relative pollen productivity; a key parameter for reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records. Progress in physical geography, 43(6), 731-753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309133319861808

Reconstructing land cover from pollen data using mathematical models of the relationship between them has the potential to translate the many thousand pollen records produced over the last 100 years (over 2300 radiocarbon-dated pollen records exist f... Read More about Novel methods of estimating relative pollen productivity; a key parameter for reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records.

A method for reconstructing temporal changes in vegetation functional trait composition using Holocene pollen assemblages (2019)
Journal Article
Carvalho, F., Brown, K. A., Waller, M. P., Bunting, M. J., Boom, A., & Leng, M. J. (2019). A method for reconstructing temporal changes in vegetation functional trait composition using Holocene pollen assemblages. PLoS ONE, 14(5), Article e0216698. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216698

Methods of reconstructing changes in plant traits over long time scales are needed to understand the impact of changing environmental conditions on ecosystem processes and services. Although Holocene pollen have been extensively used to provide recor... Read More about A method for reconstructing temporal changes in vegetation functional trait composition using Holocene pollen assemblages.

Constraining pollen-based estimates of forest cover in the Amazon: A simulation approach (2018)
Journal Article
Whitney, B. S., Smallman, T. L., Mitchard, E. T., Carson, J. F., Mayle, F. E., & Bunting, M. J. (2019). Constraining pollen-based estimates of forest cover in the Amazon: A simulation approach. Holocene, 29(2), 262-270. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683618810394

Pollen dispersal and deposition (PDD) modelling has been instrumental in reconstructing historical vegetation in temperate regions, but its application has been limited in the tropics where there is greatest uncertainty in past land cover change. Her... Read More about Constraining pollen-based estimates of forest cover in the Amazon: A simulation approach.

Airborne pollen concentration in Nanjing, eastern China, and its relationship with meteorological factors (2018)
Journal Article
Fang, Y., Ma, C., Bunting, M. J., Ding, A., Lu, H., & Sun, W. (2018). Airborne pollen concentration in Nanjing, eastern China, and its relationship with meteorological factors. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 123(19), 10,842-10,856. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD029026

This paper presents the results of airborne pollen and spore trapping in Nanjing city, eastern China, using a Burkard pollen trap during two consecutive years (2013–2014). A total of 103 pollen and spore taxa were identified. Two concentration peaks... Read More about Airborne pollen concentration in Nanjing, eastern China, and its relationship with meteorological factors.

A review of relative pollen productivity estimates from temperate china for pollen-based quantitative reconstruction of past plant cover (2018)
Journal Article
Li, F., Gaillard, M., Xu, Q., Bunting, M. J., Li, Y., Li, J., …Shen, W. (2018). A review of relative pollen productivity estimates from temperate china for pollen-based quantitative reconstruction of past plant cover. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9, Article 1214. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01214

Model-based quantitative reconstruction of past plant cover in Europe has shown great potential for: (i) testing hypotheses related to Holocene vegetation dynamics, biodiversity, and their relationships with climate and land use; (ii) studying long t... Read More about A review of relative pollen productivity estimates from temperate china for pollen-based quantitative reconstruction of past plant cover.

Maps from mud - using the Multiple Scenario Approach to reconstruct land cover dynamics from pollen records: a case study of two Neolithic landscapes (2018)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., Farrell, M., Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., & Whittle, A. (2018). Maps from mud - using the Multiple Scenario Approach to reconstruct land cover dynamics from pollen records: a case study of two Neolithic landscapes. Frontiers in ecology and evolution, 6(APR), https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2018.00036

Pollen records contain a wide range of information about past land cover, but translation from the pollen diagram to other formats remains a challenge. In this paper, we present LandPolFlow, a software package enabling Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA... Read More about Maps from mud - using the Multiple Scenario Approach to reconstruct land cover dynamics from pollen records: a case study of two Neolithic landscapes.

Seeing the wood for the trees : recent advances in the reconstruction of woodland in archaeological landscapes using pollen data (2017)
Journal Article
Bunting, J., & Farrell, M. (2017). Seeing the wood for the trees : recent advances in the reconstruction of woodland in archaeological landscapes using pollen data. Environmental Archaeology, 23(3), 228-239. https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2017.1377405

Pollen sequences record the vegetation cover of past landscapes, but translating a pollen diagram into a landscape reconstruction is not straightforward. This paper reviews recent advances in the reconstruction of woodland cover from palynological da... Read More about Seeing the wood for the trees : recent advances in the reconstruction of woodland in archaeological landscapes using pollen data.

Relative pollen productivities and relevant source area of pollen in the forest–steppe ecotone of northern China (2017)
Journal Article
Yuecong, L., Yawen, G., Bunting, M. J., Zhen, Z., Jia, L., Chunyue, W., …Chenzhi, L. (2017). Relative pollen productivities and relevant source area of pollen in the forest–steppe ecotone of northern China. Review of palaeobotany and palynology, 244, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2017.04.003

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Modeling efforts to quantitatively reconstruct vegetation from pollen have never been attempted along the forest–steppe border of China, however such studies are important in interpreting fossil pollen assemblages of vegetation c... Read More about Relative pollen productivities and relevant source area of pollen in the forest–steppe ecotone of northern China.

Relation between modern pollen rain, vegetation and climate in northern China: Implications for quantitative vegetation reconstruction in a steppe environment (2017)
Journal Article
Ge, Y., Li, Y., Bunting, M. J., Li, B., Li, Z., & Wang, J. (2017). Relation between modern pollen rain, vegetation and climate in northern China: Implications for quantitative vegetation reconstruction in a steppe environment. The Science of the total environment, 586, 25-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.02.027

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Vegetation reconstructions from palaeoecological records depend on adequate understanding of relationships between modern pollen, vegetation and climate. A key parameter for quantitative vegetation reconstructions is the Relative... Read More about Relation between modern pollen rain, vegetation and climate in northern China: Implications for quantitative vegetation reconstruction in a steppe environment.

Disentangling the pollen signal from fen systems : modern and Holocene studies from southern and eastern England (2016)
Journal Article
Waller, M., Carvalho, F., Grant, M., Bunting, J., & Brown, K. (2017). Disentangling the pollen signal from fen systems : modern and Holocene studies from southern and eastern England. Review of palaeobotany and palynology, 238, 15-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2016.11.007

Thick deposits of peat derived from fen environments accumulated in the coastal lowland areas adjacent to the North Sea during the middle and late Holocene. These sediments are frequently used in pollen-based reconstructions of in situ and more dista... Read More about Disentangling the pollen signal from fen systems : modern and Holocene studies from southern and eastern England.

Replicability of data collected for empirical estimation of relative pollen productivity (2016)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., Farrell, M., & Middleton, R. (2016). Replicability of data collected for empirical estimation of relative pollen productivity. Review of palaeobotany and palynology, 232, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2016.04.009

The effects of repeated survey and fieldwork timing on data derived from a recently proposed standard field methodology for empirical estimation of relative pollen productivity (RPP) have been tested. Seasonal variations in vegetation and associated... Read More about Replicability of data collected for empirical estimation of relative pollen productivity.