How old is the Tasmanian cultural landscape? A test of landscape openness using quantitative land‐cover reconstructions

A study challenging long-held assumptions about Tasmania's landscape evolution reveals that treeless vegetation, not rainforests, dominated the Holocene era in the Dove Lake region of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. By employing advanced pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstructions and mechanistic models—specifically the REVEALS model with a Lagrangian stochastic approach—the research demonstrates that landscape openness has persisted at around 50% throughout the Holocene, contradicting theories suggesting late-Holocene transitions from rainforest to moorland. The findings indicate a rapid decline in forest cover around 4,000 years ago, likely due to regional moisture reduction, and highlight the underrepresentation of landscape openness in traditional pollen percentage analyses.

Mariani, M., Connor, S. E., Fletcher, M.-S., Theuerkauf, M., Kuneš, P., Jacobsen, G., Saunders, K. M., & Zawadzki, A. (2017). How old is the Tasmanian cultural landscape? A test of landscape openness using quantitative land‐cover reconstructions. Journal of Biogeography, 44(10), 2410–2420. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13040