ABSTRACT
Pollen is liberally distributed across the landscape, and is preserved in a variety of different types of site. Pollen analysts frequently have a choice of deposits to sample, and will never examine all the fossil pollen at any site. Pollen data can be used to sense past and present vegetation at a range of spatial scales. Huntley and Birks produced contoured distribution maps of pollen from the last 13,000 years, and were careful to select sites that had been sampled and analysed in a relatively uniform manner. Counting fossil pollen senses vegetation in an indirect fashion. The noise' in the pollen data at the regional spatial scale resolved into the signal' at the local scale. Our studies of contemporary pollen-vegetation relationships have revealed the schizophrenic nature of regional pollen data. All transport is aerial, and there is minimal horizontal or vertical mixing of pollen after deposition.
