Modern pollen-vegetation relationship from the Baramulla District (Jammu and Kashmir), India

With the prime object of improving the understanding on the relationship between modern pollen and extant vegetation, the present study was conducted from the Baramulla District (Jammu and Kashmir), India. Palynological studies of thirty five modern moss cushions (moss polsters) revealed that Pinus spp., amongst the conifers (needle-leaved taxa), are over-represented in pollen assemblage, which could be due to its high pollen productivity and excellent pollen dispersal efficiency. Other coniferous taxa and broad-leaved taxa barring Juglans sp. have lower values in pollen assemblage, so as the representation of tropical deciduous forest elements, as well as shrubby taxa. The terrestrial herbaceous taxa except Poaceae, as well as marshy taxa, aquatics and ferns and/or pteridophytic taxa have also sparse representation. The recovered pollen assemblages show the distorted picture of the extant vegetation, hence, should be used with caution for the interpretation of fossil pollen records. Numerical analyses (Principal Component Analysis: PCA), conducted on the 35 studied modern samples, suggest that the vegetation seems to increase with altitude. Moreover, it seems that at higher altitude, Cedrus has higher pollen counts, and at lower altitude Nigrospora was high. There are some lowering of vegetation at two altitudes (including 28th sample, near ∼2310 m altitude), which could be either due to taphonomic bias, and/or countsize bias. The study could be utilized for understanding the fossils pollen records for the reconstruction of palaeovegetation and palaeoeclimate in a specific area in question.