Comparative study of modern phytolith assemblages from inter-tropical Africa [An article from: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology]

This digital document is a journal article from Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
We present a synthesis of modern phytolith studies from Africa, to infer the potential and limitations of phytolith assemblages to reconstruct vegetation and tree cover density. The modern dataset includes 149 phytolith assemblages of surface soil samples from 10 phytogeographical zones and sub-zones from East and West Africa, as well as 500 m-resolution satellite estimates of the percent tree cover at the sampling sites. To test the potential of phytolith assemblages to discriminate vegetation types we used principal component analysis. For each phytogeographical zone and sub-zone, we also provided the mean values, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals for the means obtained on the modern African dataset for the abundance of the 13 most common phytolith types preserved in soil samples, and for four phytolith indices. Results from the modern African dataset show that 1) the relative abundances of 11 (out of 13) phytolith types allow discrimination of all vegetation zones but the Somalia-Masai steppe region, which at elevation