From the Neolithic to the present day: The impact of human presence on floristic diversity in the sandstone Northern Vosges (France)

The Northern Vosges and the Pays de Bitche (north-eastern France) are well-known regions for their rich recent industrial heritage. On the other hand, the ancient history of these regions is less well known and the relationships between human populations and their environments during ancient times is still largely unexplored. We carried out a multidisciplinary paleoenvironmental study on the site of the bog pond located below the ruins of the medieval castle of Waldeck in order to reconstruct the history of the vegetation in the region since 6600 cal. BP. Throughout the Holocene, the succession of forest vegetation (pine and hazelnut forests, reduced oak forest, beech forest, oak-beech forest) was largely dominated by pine. Human presence was tenuous during the Neolithic period, then well marked from the Bronze Age onwards with the introduction of crops and livestock crops in the catchment area. From the Middle Ages onwards, anthropic pressure increased dramatically with the building of Waldeck Castle in the thirteenth century, which led to a major opening of the area. The Modern period is characterized by a gradual return of the forest, with decreasing anthropogenic pressure. Over time, occupation phases were interspersed with abandonment phases during which human activities regressed or disappeared. Finally, the rarefaction analysis carried out on pollen data shows that human presence led to a gradual increase in plant diversity, which peaked in the Middle Ages, whereas the forest lost some of its resilience to human disturbance over time.