The Holocene 1–12 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0959683616670472 hol.sagepub.com Introduction The vegetation and climate interactions and feedbacks are one of the key issues in palaeoecological studies because of their importance for better understanding and reconstruction of envi- ronmental processes and climate changes. Plants are highly adapted to climate conditions and their pollen can be a very good indicator of plant functioning and climate conditions at the time when they were living. To reconstruct vegetation, land- cover and climate change in the past several approaches have been used. They are based on modern pollen surface samples and moss polsters, that is, transfer functions for describing cli- mate influences on the composition of pollen assemblages (Seppä et al., 2004), the best modern analogue technique (Nak- agawa et al., 2002; Novenko and Olchev, 2015), and some mod- els of pollen-dispersal patterns (Prentice, 1986; Sugita, 2007). A less commonly used alternative to these methods is to take time series of pollen abundance with robust chronological con- trol and calibrate them against instrumental meteorological data. This approach has great potential using networks of pollen traps with over 20 years of observations (Hicks, 2001; Huusko and Hicks, 2009; Mazier et al., 2012; Van der Knaap et al., 2010), data from annually laminated lake sediments (Seppä et al., 2009), and precisely dated peat monoliths (Kuoppamaa et al., 2009; Mazier et al., 2012). A pollen accumulation rate (PAR; number of pollen grains cm -2 yr -1 ) is a very useful characteristic in palaeoecological stud- ies because it allows to reflect independent variations in each plant species in the pollen assemblage alternatively to percentages that are affected by the variations in other taxa in the pollen sum (Davis, 1967; Davis et al., 1973, 1984). The PAR is now widely applied for assessment of temperature impacts on pollen produc- tivity (Barnekow et al., 2007; Kamenik et al., 2009; Nielsen et al., 2010), reconstruction of plant abundance and biomass (Broström et al., 2004; Mazier et al., 2010; Seppä et al., 2009), land-use changes (Kuoppamaa et al., 2009), and pollen diversity and its interpretation in terms of taxonomic richness on the landscape Evidence of temperature and precipitation change over the past 100 years in a high-resolution pollen record from the boreal forest of Central European Russia Alexander Olchev, 1 Elena Novenko, 2,3 Viktor Popov, 4,5 Tatiana Pampura 6 and Markus Meili 7 Abstract Near-annual pollen records for the last 100 years were obtained from a 65-cm peat monolith from a raised peat bog in the Central Forest State Natural Biosphere Reserve (southern part of the Valdai Hills, European Russia) and compared with the available long-term meteorological observations. An age–depth model for the peat monolith was constructed by 210 Pb and 137 Cs dating. Cross-correlation and the Granger causality analysis indicated a broad range of statistically significant correlations between the pollen accumulation rate (PAR) of the main forest-forming trees and shrubs (Picea, Pinus, Betula, Tilia, Quercus, Ulmus, Alnus, and Corylus) and the air temperature and precipitation during the previous 3 years. Results showed that high air temperatures during the growing season (May–September) in the year prior to the flowering led to an increase in pollen productivity of the main tree species. The statistically significant correlation between the PAR of trees and shrubs and winter precipitation of the current and previous years could reflect the influence of winter precipitation on soil water availability and as a result on tree growth and functioning in the spring. Keywords 210 Pb and 137 Cs dating, boreal forests, European Russia, Granger causality test, high-resolution peat profile, peat bog, pollen accumulation rates Received 19 May 2016; revised manuscript accepted 10 August 2016 1 A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 2 Faculty of Geography, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia 3 Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 4 Faculty of Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia 5 Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Russia 6 Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 7 Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry (ACES), Stockholm University, Sweden Corresponding author: Elena Novenko, Faculty of Geography, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory 1, 119991 Moscow, Russia. Email: lenanov@mail.ru 670472HOL 0 0 10.1177/0959683616670472The HoloceneOlchev et al. research-article 2016 Research paper by guest on October 6, 2016 hol.sagepub.com Downloaded from