Ecology 5th Edition by Manuel Molles

Exercise 14

Ronald Neilson and his colleagues (1992, 1995) used the environmental requirements of plants to predict the responses of vegetation to climate change. In chapter 1, we briefly dis­cussed the studies of Margaret Davis (1983, 1989) that reconstructed the movement of vegetation across eastern North America. She made this reconstruction using the pollen preserved in lake sediments. How might the results of paleoecological studies such as this be used to refine models based on plant environmental requirements? (Assume that you can also reasonably reconstruct the climate when historic changes in vegetation occurred.)