A meta-database of Holocene sediment cores for England

Andrew J. Suggitt*, Richard T. Jones, Chris J. Caseldine, Brian Huntley, John R. Stewart, Stephen J. Brooks, Eleanor Brown, David Fletcher, Phillipa K. Gillingham, Jonathan Larwood, Nicholas A. Macgregor, Barbara Silva, Zoë Thomas, Robert J. Wilson, Ilya M.D. Maclean

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Extracting sediment cores for palaeoecological and archaeological investigations has occurred extensively across England since the early 20th century. Surprisingly, there has been comparatively little collation of these valuable publications and potential sources of data; for example, a search on the European Pollen Database (1st Aug 2014 edition) found just 118 core sites for the whole of Great Britain. Here, using a combination of systematic meta-searching and knowledge of the unpublished (‘grey’) literature, we have assembled a meta-database of some 763 sediment cores for palaeoecological records, documented across 273 scientific studies. The majority of these (>90 %) were sediment cores upon which pollen analyses had been performed, but other types of evidence, such as plant macrofossil and faunal records were also identified. We are making this meta-database publicly available, in the hope that it will assist further investigations into Holocene vegetation history, palaeoecology, geoarchaeology and environmental change.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)743-747
Number of pages5
JournalVegetation History and Archaeobotany
Volume24
Issue number6
Early online date30 Jan 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2015
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Climatic change
  • Dating
  • Palynology
  • Pollen diagram
  • Radiocarbon

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