ABSTRACT
Richard Bradshaw has presented a valuable and concise study of the spatial scale in the pollen record. Bradshaw says that pollen, perhaps uniquely among the data used in environmental reconstruction, defies the generalisation that the investigator has little choice about site location or type of material. Bradshaw mentions the use of closed-canopy pollen sites with which local vegetational patterns may be resolved within the regional reconstruction. Thus more humus, small hollows and appropriate buried soils may be dominated by pollen that has travelled 2030m from its source when trees overhang the site. Associated with the decline are peaks in charcoals and non-arboreal pollen. It is inferred that human disturbance was the probable cause of various events in the pollen diagrams. The fluctuations in this pattern are partly a function of changes in the relative positions of sample site and pollen-screening tree taxa.
