Sprecher
Beschreibung
In the Iberian Peninsula, pine forests played a fundamental role in shaping Late Quaternary landscapes, both through the occupation of treeless areas following fires and climate change, and through the stabilization of environments less suitable for other arboreal communities (sands, steep slopes, etc.). Based on macrofossil evidence from different regions of the Iberian Peninsula, it is now well established that Pinus sylvestris L.- Pinus nigra J.F. Arnold group, and Pinus pinaster Aiton occupied areas very close to the Atlantic coast during the Late Pleistocene, before retreating towards higher elevations or latitudes with the Holocene climate amelioration.
Nevertheless, the scarcity of Holocene palaeobotanical evidence regarding coastal P. pinaster and montane P. sylvestris populations leaves the autochthonous status of the present populations uncertain. Within the framework of the ODISEA project, botanical macro-remains and micro-remains of three sites have been studied between 2021 and 2025. The results demonstrate, for the second half of the Holocene: a continuous although low-frequency presence of Pinus in the Serra do Gerês (Portugal) in a landscape dominated by heath; an uninterrupted coastal persistence of Pinus in Southwestern Iberia, including P. pinea and P. pinaster, with sparse Quercus representation; and the long-term stability of P. sylvestris forests in the Central System, particularly in the Sierra de Guadarrama (Spain) even at mid-elevations (rather than exclusively at high altitudes).
This publication is part of the project PID2020-119836GB-I00 funded by 482 MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/.