Abstract
The northern Fennoscandian tree-line area consists of fairly distinct vegetation zones. The pollen stratigraphies of two boreal sites and two tundra sites were studied and the palynological data analysed numerically. The main aim was to measure palynological richness, using rarefaction analysis, and to assess its value in reflecting patterns of past floristic richness. Rates of palynological change were measured using both chord distance and Euclidean distance as the dissimilarity coefficient. The results show low palynological richness during the Younger Dryas. The values increase rapidly at the transition to the Holocene. During the Holocene the values are in reversed order in relation to present vegetation density, the tundra sites having the highest palynological richness. This suggests that differences in the size of the pollen catchment may have an important role in palynological richness estimates and that no straight comparisons of palynological richness should be made between sites from different vegetation zones. Most pronounced changes in palynological richness take place in the Lake Rautuselka core, where high
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