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Understanding the relationships between modern pollen deposits and their surrounding vegetation is an important tool to improve the quality of reconstructions and interpretations of past vegetation changes from fossil pollen records. The overall aim of this research project is to validate and calibrate mathematical models of relationships for assemblages deposited in peatland and forest landscapes in southeast China, which will form an essential basis for quantitative reconstruction of past land cover from Quaternary peat deposits in the region. This field study area presents great challenges, being spatially large in extent compared to studies in northwestern Europe and of difficult and inaccessible mountainous terrain, which makes the vegetation survey (10m-100m) time-consuming. Firstly, a study to decide whether to use moss or soil surface samples is presented. 42 paired moss and soils sample were collected in the five main forest types. Similar levels of variation in the pollen spectra are seen, but there are systematic differences in the mean values of key groups of taxa. Moss polsters are chosen since they record the most accurate representation of the contemporary vegetation. Secondly, the behaviour of several pollen dispersal and deposition models is tested against a grassland-forest transect. The Prentice-Sugita model passed the test and is therefore considered suitable for use. Thirdly, the first estimates of relative pollen productivity (RPP) for 9 key taxa (Castanea, Cryptomeria, Cyclobalanopsis, Liquidambar, Pinus, Poaceae, Quercus, Rosaceae and Theaceae) are presented. Two alternative methods (modified Davis method and iteration method) for estimating RPP are also developed, which have great potential for use in wider areas. Fourthly, wetland herb taxa are important in the pollen spectra from mire records, therefore surface samples were taken from a mire surface. They show that there are inter-annual differences in pollen from wetland herbs. Finally, the discussion presents suggestions for how these findings can be best applied to land-cover reconstruction, explores the strengths and limitations of the study and identifies future directions which such work could take.

Palaeoenvironmental investigations from the Lake Plav catchment of the Prokletije Mountains in Montenegro and Albania, allowed primarily climatic change and anthropogenic influences during the Late Holocene and particularly the Little Ice Age (LIA) to be identified. Three sediment cores were analysed, two from Lake Plav (904 m a.s.l., cores LPCA and LPCB) and one from the upper catchment site of Lake C in Buni i Jezerces (1754 m a.s.l., core BJC1). These sediments were analysed for a variety of proxies including pollen, ostracoda, organic content, magnetic susceptibility and particle size. Chronologies for each sediment core were constructed using AMS radiocarbon, 210Pb and 137Cs dating techniques. The lower sites provided a record of past flood events, anthropogenic influences, lake development and infilling that have occurred since c. AD 500. Core BJC1 provided longer-term data since c. 2720 BC, providing complementary records of Pediastrum and thermophilous arboreal types, identified following a catchment vegetation survey. Glacial geomorphological mapping of the Maja e Koljaet glacier in Buni i Jezerces, Albania, enabled a catchment specific palaeotemperature record to be constructed from AD 1859 to the present. Glacial features were dated using lichenometry before degree-day modelling enabled temperature reconstruction. The palaeotemperature reconstruction for the Albanian Little Ice Age glacial maximum (LIAGM) suggests that temperatures were 0.9°C below the 1980-2008 annual temperature mean. This work also provided the first record of glacial extent during the LIA in Albania, indicating that the Albania LIAGM occurred c. AD 1859, around a decade after the European LIAGM and two decades before that of Montenegro. Anthropogenic indicators were used to reconstruct human activity in the catchment, which suggested that arable farming was pursued throughout the Medieval Warm Period (MWP; c. AD 800-1090) and continued during a period of transition to the LIA, between c. AD 1090 and AD 1300. The LIA (c. AD 1300 - 1860) was characterised by an abrupt Alnus decline, thought to be the result of anthropogenic clearance of the floodplain and reduction of both arable and thermophilous types. During the LIA sedimentation rates were up to 1.41 + 0.17 cm yr-1 at Lake Plav causing lake infilling and shallowing allowing wetland expansion c. AD 1570. The result of lake infilling is highlighted during the early 20th century, when the lake extent fell by around 42% as a result of climatic amelioration post-LIA causing lake levels to fall and wetland indicators to decline. The inferred past climatic changes from the Lake Plav catchment are compared to data from around the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. This allows identification of the climatic influences affecting the site during the Late Holocene. Catchment records have provided evidence of cooler and wetter conditions coeval to the occurrence of solar minima such as the Wolf, Spörer and Maunder minima. Overall, the records suggest that continental atmospheric circulation patterns such as the North Sea-Caspian Pattern (NCP) and East Atlantic-West Russia pattern (EA-WR), dominated the site until the late 1800s, when records become more synchronous with the NAO index and Mediterranean/Southern European data.