Hooghiemstra Henry

• PhD
• University of Amsterdam

Antoine Cleef studied the vegetation of the Colombian and Ecuadorian páramo for four decades. After a brain haemorrhage in December 2018, he lost his speech and his ability to write. He learned to paint with his left hand. Photographs from his fieldwork in the páramo on A4-size now inspire his watercolour paintings. With the precision he illustrate...

Controversies exist regarding the extent of past human influence on terrestrial ecosystems and the relative importance of human versus climatic factors in shaping Holocene vegetation. However, there has been no systematic examination of these issues at a global scale. Here we integrate palaeoecological, archaeological, and palaeoclimate data to ass...

Pollen-based evidence of human presence is crucial for reconstructing human history. However, information on the morphology of pollen grains of global food plants and regional pollen-based human indicators is scattered in the literature, leading to the risk of overlooking important evidence of human presence. To address this issue, we first compile...

Tropical forests are changing in composition and productivity, probably in response to changes in climate and disturbances. The responses to these multiple environmental drivers, and the mechanisms underlying the changes, remain largely unknown. Here, we use a functional trait approach on timescales of 10,000 years to assess how climate and disturb...

Frans Florschütz (1887‒1965) developed pollen analysis in the Netherlands as a biostratigraphical tool on the interface between geology, palaeobotany, soil science and climate history. He was involved in agricultural practice and the building of large infrastructure. Florschütz established centres of pollen analysis at the universities in Wageninge...

The present “comment” on Zorilla‐Azcué et al.’s paper “The DNA history of a lonely oak: Quercus humboldtii phylogeography in the Colombian Andes. Ecology and Evolution 2021, doi:10.100‐2/ece3.7529” provides the paleoecological understanding of oak forest since Quercus became apparent in the Northern Andes three glacial–interglacial cycles ago. The...

We sketch the initial history of collecting deep cores in terrestrial and marine sedimentary basins and ice cores to study environmental and climate change. Subsequently, we focus on the development of long records from the Northern Andes. The 586 m long pollen record from ancient Lake Bogotá reflects the last 2.25 × 106 years with ∼ 1.2 kyr resolu...

The Andes are the world's most biodiverse mountain chain, encompassing a complex array of ecosystems from tropical rainforests to alpine habitats. We provide a synthesis of Andean vascular plant diversity by estimating a list of all species with publicly available records, which we integrate with a phylogenetic dataset of 14 501 Neotropical plant s...

We praise the authors for their work, and for the lyric title of their paper. We give a concise sketch of the present level of understanding of Quercus forest in Colombia. We identify the shortcomings in this published paper. We improve the relevance of this paper about Quercus as well as for future phylogenetic investigations other montane forest...

The pace of Holocene vegetation change Although much is known about the rapid environmental changes that have occurred since the Industrial Revolution, the patterns of change over the preceding millennia have been only patchily understood. Using a global set of >1100 fossil pollen records, Mottl et al. explored the rates of vegetation change over t...

The site of Anse Trabaud on Martinique in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles has yielded valuable information about human occupation from deep beneath its surface. The site is located in the southeastern part of the island, an area vulnerable to extreme wave events. The archaeological deposits are dated to 1290–780 cal BP (2σ). The earlies...

Accelerating ecosystem disruption Oceanic islands are among the most recent areas on Earth to have been colonized by humans, in many cases in just the past few thousand years. Therefore, they are important laboratories for the study of human impacts on natural vegetation and biodiversity. Nogué et al. provide a quantitative palaeoecological study o...

In 1492 CE Columbus landed in the "New World". In 1494 CE he founded La Isabela, the first colonial town in the Americas, located at the northern coast of the current Dominican Republic (Haytí island). Five hundred years of colonial exploitation followed, which had far-reaching impacts for the Indigenous people and local landscapes. Paleoecological...

We provide an overview of environmental and climatic change in Colombia during the Quaternary, the last ca. 2.58 million years (Ma) before present. This period is characterised by a suite of glacial-interglacial cycles which are remarkably well documented in Colombian sediments. The distribution of Colombia's main ecosystems has changed repeatedly...

The long-term response of ancient societies to climate change has been a matter of global debate. Until recently, the lack of integrative studies using archaeological, palaeoecological and palaeoclimatological data prevented an evaluation of the relationship between climate change, distinct subsistence strategies and cultural transformations across...

Scientific dissemination paper published in Geografie, a magazine of the Royal Dutch Geography Society (KNAG). Link to the paper: https://geografie.nl/artikel/columbus-voetafdruk

Aim To quantify the effect of Pleistocene climate fluctuations on habitat connectivity across páramos in the Northern Andes. Location Northern Andes. Methods The unique páramos habitat underwent dynamic shifts in elevation in response to changing climate conditions during the Pleistocene. The lower boundary of the páramos is defined by the upper...

Suppl._Info._Table_S1 – Supplemental material for Columbus’ environmental impact in the New World: Land use change in the Yaque River valley, Dominican Republic

Columbus’ arrival in the New World in AD 1492 on the northern coast of Hispaniola was followed by a suite of changes in land-use. We reconstruct environmental change from a 225-cm-long sediment core from site Los Indios from an abandoned and sediment-filled meander of the Yaque River, Cibao Valley, northeastern Dominican Republic. The sediment reco...

The distribution of species in the present is just a snapshot in time after millions of years of change. Pleistocene climatic cycles, varying from 100 ky to sub‐millennial scales, played an important role in shaping species’ distributions. In mountains, these cycles pushed species rhythmically along the slopes, opening temporary dispersal pathways...

Fire was rare on Mauritius prior to human arrival (AD 1598); subsequently three phases of elevated fire activity occurred: ca 1630–1747, 1787–1833, and 1950–modern. Elevated fire frequency coincided with periods of high human impact evidenced from the historical record, and is linked to the extinction of island endemics.

In this obituary the scientific career of Willem van Zeist is reviewed.

Long continental pollen records from the northern Andes, interpreted by classical qualitative palynological approaches, have been shown to be rich sources of information about vegetational, environmental, and climatic change and biome evolution over long time periods. However, such data sets are large and complex, thereby restricting the type of sp...

The dodo Raphus cucullatus Linnaeus, 1758, an extinct and flightless, giant pigeon endemic to Mauritius, has fascinated people since its discovery, yet has remained surprisingly poorly known. Until the mid-19th century, almost all that was known about the dodo was based on illustrations and written accounts by 17th century mariners, often of questi...

We compare eight pollen records reflecting climatic and environmental change from northern and southern sites in the tropical Andes. Our analysis focuses on the last 30ĝ€ 000 years, with particular emphasis on the Pleistocene to Holocene transition. We explore ecological grouping and downcore ordination results as two approaches for extracting envi...

An improved understanding of present-day climate variability and change relies on high-quality data sets from the past 2 millennia. Global efforts to model regional climate modes are in the process of being validated against, and integrated with, records of past vegetation change. For South America, however, the full potential of vegetation records...

We compare eight pollen records reflecting climatic and environmental change from the tropical Andes. Our analysis focuses on the last 50 ka, with particular emphasis on the Pleistocene to Holocene transition. We explore ecological grouping and downcore ordination results as two approaches for extracting environmental variability from pollen record...

This is the list of the paleo-records of Version 77 of the Latin American Pollen Database. Use of the database, whether direct or indirect, must be filly acknowledged and/cited. Proper citation (subject to the documents' citing style) includes: 1) Flantua, S.G.A., Hooghiemstra, H., Grimm, E.C., Behling, H., Bush, M.B., González-Arango, C., Gosli...

This is the list of the modern pollen samples of Version 77 of the Latin American Pollen Database. Use of the database, whether direct or indirect, must be filly acknowledged and/cited. Proper citation (subject to the documents' citing style) includes: 1) Flantua, S.G.A., Hooghiemstra, H., Grimm, E.C., Behling, H., Bush, M.B., González-Arango, C...

The updated inventory of the Latin American Pollen Database (LAPD) offers a wide range of new insights. This paper presents a systematic compilation of palynological research in Latin America. A comprehensive inventory of publications in peer-reviewed and grey literature shows a major expansion of studies over the last decades. The inventory includ...

We present a record of environmental and climatic changes in the northern Andes during the penultimate interglacial–glacial cycle based on integrated information from pollen and grain size distributions (GSDs). The record reflects the 58.33–26.21 m interval of a new sediment core from Lake Fúquene (2540 m elevation; 5°N) in the Colombian Andes. The...

Analyses of pollen, diatoms, XRF geochemistry, and pigments provide a unique window into how an insular ecosystem in Mauritius responded to an extreme drought event 4200 years ago. We provide a reconstruction of regional vegetation change and local wetland development under influence of sea level rise and inferred climate change between 4400 and 41...

We provide an innovative pollen-driven connectivity framework of the dynamic altitudinal distribution of North Andean biomes since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Altitudinally changing biome distributions reconstructed from a pollen record from Lake La Cocha (2780 m) are assessed in terms of their changing surface and connectivity within the study...

Climate changes affect the abundance, geographic extent, and floral composition of vegetation, which are reflected in the pollen rain. Sediment cores taken from lakes and peat bogs can be analysed for their pollen content. The fossil pollen records provide information on the temporal changes in climate and palaeo-environments. Although the complexi...

In the Andean cordilleras very conspicuous ecotones can be found. The transition from continuous upper montane forest to treeless herbaceous vegetation, regionally known as páramo (Cleef 1981; Luteyn 1999) is known as the upper forest line (UFL) or timber line (Holtmeier 2009). Above the UFL trees may occur forming small patches with diameters of t...

Centuries of human interference have led to large scale reduction of montane forests in the northern Ecuadorian Andes. As a result the natural position of the upper forest line (UFL) in the area is now subject of scientific debate, which is hindering sustainable reforestation efforts. Uncertainty is fuelled by insufficient precision of fossil polle...

A 115 cm long sediment core retrieved from the exposed uplands of Mauritius, a small oceanic island in the Indian Ocean, shows environmental change from the uninhabited era into post-colonization times. Well-preserved fossil pollen and diatoms in the uppermost 30 cm of the core reflect environmental conditions during the last 1000 years. Granulomet...

Both records show a regime shift starting at the onset of the Holocene until 7.5 ka cal. • Both records show a development from glacial open unstratified forest to Holocene closed stratified forest. • Timing and composition of the turnover sequence is different. • Similar taxa show different dynamics.

The general aim of this project is to provide a new kind of approach for predictive modeling in GIS and potential palynological GIS applications. The specific objective of this study is to improve our understanding of the Colombian savanna, with the focus on the application of GIS which consists of: a) Database design b) Predictive modeling c) Paly...

The late Pleistocene is taken here to cover the last ~130000 years (130. ka) and includes the last and the present interglacial, separated by the last glacial. Many pollen records showing vegetation dynamics reflect the Holocene and the Late Glacial period. Several records also reflect older parts of the last glacial, and only in a few sedimentary...

This paper is dedicated to the scientific career of Bas van Geel at the moment of his retirement from the University of Amsterdam. The development of the research line of non-pollen palynomorph analysis is compared with other developments in palaeoecology.

In a ~60 m long record reflecting the period from 284 ka to 27 ka we analysed grain size distributions (GSD), organic carbon content, and aquatic pollen assemblages at 1-cm increments. The 4768-points time series show with ~60 yr resolution the dynamic history of Lake Fúquene (2540 m alt., 4° N lat.) of the northern Andes during two full interglaci...

A 10 m long peat core from the Kanaka Crater (20° 25′ S, 57° 31′ E), located at 560 m elevation in Mauritius, was analyzed for microfossils. Eight radiocarbon ages show the pollen record reflects environmental and climatic change of the last ca. 38 cal ka BP. The record shows that the island was continuously covered by forest with Erica heath (Phil...

In the light of the currently increasing drought frequency and water scarcity on oceanic islands, it is crucial for the conservation of threatened insular vertebrates to assess how they will be affected. A 4000 yr old fossil assemblage in the Mare aux Songes (MAS), southwest Mauritius, Mascarene Islands, contains bones of 100 000+ individual verteb...

Here we developed a composite pollen-based record of altitudinal vegetation changes from Lake Fúquene (5° N) in Colombia at 2540m elevation. We quantitatively calibrated Arboreal Pollen percentages (AP%) into mean annual temperature (MAT) changes with an unprecedented ~60-year resolution over the past 284 000 years. An age model for the AP% record...

New pollen records from a peat bog and a soil profile in the Guandera Reserve (0°36′N, 77°42′E) document the altitudinal position and dynamics of the natural upper forest line (UFL) in the deforested landscape of northern Ecuador during the last ~3000yr. We tested the hypothesis that páramo vegetation between 3600 and 4100m developed during the las...

To reconstruct the response of vegetation to abrupt climate changes during the last glacial we have compiled pollen records from the circum-Atlantic tropics between 23°N and 23°S from both marine and terrestrial sediment cores. Pollen data were grouped into mega-biomes to facilitate the comparison between the different records. Most tropical Africa...

Tropical montane biome migration patterns in the northern Andes are found to be coupled to glacial-induced mean annual temperature (MAT) changes; however, the accuracy and resolution of current records are insufficient to fully explore their magnitude and rates of change. Here we present a ~60-year resolution pollen record over the past 284 000 yea...

IntroductionOrigins of Amazonian diversity and climate changePodocarpus in ice-age AmazoniaPost-glacial AmazoniaConclusions AcknowledgementsReferences

In het kader van het Kyoto Protocol compenseert Nederland de uitstoot van CO2 met bosaanplant in de Andes van Ecuador. Waar de natuurlijke bosgrens loopt, weten de bomenplanters blijkbaar niet, want veel nieuw bos blijkt in de paramo te staan, een zeldzaam en soortenrijk tropisch alpien graslandecosysteem dat alleen in de noordelijke Andes boven de...

Montane forest composition and specifically the position of the upper forest line (UFL) is very sensitive to climate change and human interference. As a consequence, reconstructions of past altitudinal UFL dynamics and forest species composition are crucial instruments to infer past climate change and assess the impact of (pre)historic human settle...

Modern pollen spectra were studied in forest and páramo vegetation from the Guandera area, northern Ecuador. Pollen representation was estimated by comparing the presence of plant taxa from a recent vegetation survey with the pollen spectra in moss polsters and pollen traps. In total, 73 pollen taxa were identified in the pollen rain. Per relevé, m...

The biomisation method is used to reconstruct Latin American vegetation at 6000±500 and 18 000±1000 radiocarbon years before present (¹⁴C yr BP) from pollen data. Tests using modern pollen data from 381 samples derived from 287 locations broadly reproduce potential natural vegetation. The strong temperature gradient associated with the A...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Los microfósiles de plantas y asociaciones de macrofósiles obtenidos de seis secciones fechadas del área de la cuenca de Bogotá (2550 m, Cordillera Oriental, Colombia) demuestran la evolución del bosque andino del Neógeno tardío, accionado por la orogenia andina. La adaptación progresiva de taxones tropicales calidos hacia las condiciones frías mon...

A 450 cm long sediment core was collected from a swamp in the dry forest ecosystem of the Patía Valley in Colombia (02°02′ N, 77° W at 750 m elevation). This core (Potrerillo-2) was analysed using pollen, lithostratigraphy and radiocarbon dates and was correlated with an already existing dataset from Patía-1. Together these records show that dry fo...

We have reconstructed the altitudinal position of the upper forest line (UFL) during the last 6000 years. This boundary between montane forest and páramo (tropical alpine grasslands) has important ecological and societal relevance. It is suggested that human-induced fires and deforestation during the long occupation history of the Central Valley of...

The Basin of Ubaté–Chichinquirá (5°28′N, 73°45′ W, c. 2580 m altitude) includes the Fúquene Valley and is located in the central part of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. Rocks and sediments were folded and faulted during the Miocene, uplifted during the (late) Pliocene, and affected by glaciers during the Pleistocene. Successive glacial and inte...

A pollen record from Puyehue area (40°S; 72°W) in the southern Lake District, Chile, indicates that prior to 13,410 14CyrBP (ca. 16,500–15,200calyrBP), cold resistant and hygrophilous vegetation, particularly Nothofagus forest and myricaceous vegetation, covered the area. From ca. 15,000calyrBP onward, the forest became increasingly dense. Between...

Pollen, spore, macrofossil and stable isotope (C and N) analyses from a 266-cm sediment core collected from a swamp on the Eastern Arc Mountains, Tanzania, are used to reconstruct vegetation and environmental history. An estimated time scale based on five 14C ages records approximately 38,000 yr. This palaeorecord is the first from this biodiversit...

The late Pleistocene is taken here to cover the last ~130000 years (130 ka) and includes the last and the present interglacial, separated by the last glacial. Many pollen records showing vegetation dynamics reflect the Holocene and the Late Glacial period. Several records also reflect older parts of the last glacial, and only in a few sedimentary b...

Climate changes affect the abundance, geographic extent, and floral composition of vegetation, which are reflected in the pollen rain. Sediment cores taken from lakes and peat bogs can be analysed for their pollen content. The fossil pollen records provide information on the temporal changes in climate and palaeo-environments. Although the complexi...

No abstract available. doi:10.2204/iodp.sd.5.06.2007

With the dramatically increasing manifestation of anthropogenic forcing on the Earth's climate, understanding the mechanisms and effects of abrupt climate change is crucial to extend the lead time for mitigation and adaptation. In this context, the climate variability during the Quaternary represents the closest analogy to present-day climate chang...

The montane forest habitats of the Andes support exceptionally high biodiversity, with many species occupying narrow elevational ranges (e.g., Terborgh, 1977). These attributes, combined with the short migratory distances, often <30km separates the lowlands from the upper forest line, allows montane forests to be extremely sensitive monitors of cli...

African pollen data have been used in many empirical or quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. However, the pollen types used in these studies were not controlled and standardised, preventing the precise understanding of pollen–plant and pollen–climate relation that is necessary for the accurate quantification of continental scale climat...

Holocene environments in the intra-Andean basin of Duitama (Eastern Cordillera of Colombia, 2510 m altitude) are presented based on the 620 cm long Vargas pollen and sediment record. Seven AMS radiocarbon dates show these lake and swamp sediments represent the period from 8800 to 2610 14C yr BP. We identified seven distinct periods of environmental...

Change in diversity of fossil pollen through time is used as a surrogate for biodiversity history. However, there have been few studies to explore the sensitivity of the measured pollen diversity to vegetation changes and the relationship between pollen diversity and plant diversity. This paper presents results of a study to assess the relationship...

In addition to being of interest to ancient Greek and Roman historians, the site of Philippi, NE Greece, has long been noted in Quaternary circles for providing the longest continuous European pollen record, spanning the last one million years. Here the original age model is re-evaluated and a new marine-terrestrial correlation is proposed. An astr...

We present a synthesis of the palaeolimnological and palaeoclimatic reconstructions of four sites in Colombia. The record from Lake El Caimito, the westernmost site on the Pacific Coast, dates from the Late Holocene and shows lacustrine sedimentation frequently interrupted by fluvial pulses. These pulses probably reflect periods of increased precip...

Colombian vegetation, at the ecological level of the biome, is reconstructed at six sites using pollen data assigned a priori to plant functional types and biomes. The chosen sites incorporate four savanna sites (Laguna Sardinas, Laguna Angel, El Piñal and Laguna Carimagua), a site on the transition between savanna and Amazon rainforest (Loma Linda...

Fossil pollen data from sediment cores may be used as a measure for past plant diversity. According to the theory of probability, palynological richness is positively related to the pollen count. In a low pollen count, only common taxa are detected, whereas rare taxa are only detected by chance. The detection of all pollen taxa requires a very high...

After a review of the first steps in marine palynology, we show that the understanding of the northwest African setting is crucial to evaluate the potential of marine palynological studies elsewhere. We studied distribution patterns of pollen grains in recent marine sediments off NW Africa and were able to clearly relate patterns to modern pollen s...