[BIOME 6000 Project: latest advances of reconstructing palaeobiome].
Global change research needs the data about the past states of the Earth system, e.g., the pollen and plant macrofossil records for specified time slices (for example, the mid-Holocene interval, ca 6,000 aBP, and the last glacial maximun, LGM, ca 18,000 aBP). In the past, the utilization of these palaeoecological data is mostly scattered and point-fixed, and the reconstruction of palaeovegetation is often qualitatively descriptive. The establishment of international collaboration project BIOME 6000 (a global palaeovegetation mapping program) of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Project (IGBP) breaks a new approach for the synthesis and quantitative study of palaeoecological data. In the projescts The methodology of biomization for assigning palaeoeclogical records to biomes is emphasized, in which, plant pollen taxa are assigned to one or more plant functional types (PFTs) by collecting widely global palaeoecological records which have quality assurance, and by using PFT definition based on the principles of modern ecology. Through combining PFTs into biome types, the global synthesis of biomes reconstructed by using palaeoecological data can be realized. The biomization method might provide a benchmark for coupled atmosphere-biosphere. This trend will facilitate biome mapping for other time slices, and co-evolution of atmosphere-biosphere modeling and palaeodata synthesis and analysis will continue.
Ni
J
J
Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093. nijian@public.east.cn.net
D004463:Ecology; D005580:Fossils; D008954:Models, Biological; D063245:Plant Development; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D013997:Time Factors