The Late-Glacial infill of three lake successions in The Netherlands: Regional vegetational history in relation to NW European vegetational developments

Pollen analyses of three Late Weichselian Late-Glacial lake sediment successions provided a basis for the construction of pollen assemblage zones for The Netherlands. Special attention is paid to the behaviours of Populus in the Alleröd boreal forest. Some aspects of the autecology of Juniperus and Hippohaë and the dynamics of birch and pine forests are discussed in the light of the observed succession. The Late-Glacial vegetational succession in The Netherlands is compared with data published for neighbouring NW European countries. It is concluded that differences in precipitation (snow cover) along a west-east transect to a great extent determined the inferred differences in vegetational development.     

Two mid-Holocene millennia of swamp forest in the Rhine/Meuse deltaic plain

The paleoenvironmental evolution of a Dutch deltaic swamp forest area during the mid-Holocene was strongly governed by a general rise of water level (bound to postglacial sea-level rise) and by fluctuations in this water-level rise. A phasing of this 2,000 years period shows alternation of closed swamp forest on the one hand, and (fluvio-) lacustrine environment with swamp forest islands on the other. The refined scale of investigation permits bird's-view landscape reconstructions. These also show how attractive the area was for neolithic fishermen.     

The fluviolagoonal palaeoenvironment in the Rhine/Meuse deltaic plain

Detailed lithostratigraphical, palynological and ¹⁴C analyses have served to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment during two main, mid-Holocene, regional phases of increased fluvial clay and sand deposition in the Rhine/Meuse deltaic plain. The investigated location lies in a broad area transitional to the upstream fluviatile and the downstream marine (lagoon/tidal flat) deposition zones. The palaeoenvironment appears to have been extensive, permanent open water intersected by the wooded natural levees of many small river channels. The term fluviolagoon is proposed for this typical environment, as illustrated here by three-dimensional oblique landscape drawings. A present-day example is found in the Magdalena river deltaic plain, Colombia.