Landscape reconstructions for Europe  during the late Last Glacial (60–20&thinsp;ka&thinsp;BP):  a pollen-based REVEALS approach

Kern, Oliver A.; Maier, Andreas; Vercauteren, Nikki

doi:10.5194/essd-17-5997-2025

Articles | Volume 17, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-5997-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-5997-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 11

Data description paper

|

11 Nov 2025

Data description paper |

| 11 Nov 2025

Landscape reconstructions for Europe during the late Last Glacial (60–20 ka BP): a pollen-based REVEALS approach

Oliver A. Kern, Andreas Maier, and Nikki Vercauteren

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Nov 2025)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Nov 2024)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on essd-2024-306', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 May 2025

This study holds significant scientific and methodological value for reconstructing vegetation cover in Europe during the late Last Glacial period (60-20 ka BP). The authors applied the REVEALS approach based on numerous palynological records. An important methodological contribution of the work is the comparison between REVEALS results and palynological analysis data, along with attempts to explain the obtained discrepancies.
The authors present interesting data for stadials and interstadials of MIS 3 - an important yet controversial period of the Late Pleistocene. I found lacking the attempts to explain the obtained data for northeastern Europe, where unlike other regions, the reconstructed forest cover decreases during interstadial warming and humidification. What climatic mechanism could lead to such consequences? For instance, during the Holocene, warming and increased moisture typically result in northward forest expansion.
The paper repeatedly mentions that understanding vegetation variability during stadial-interstadial cycles and extreme glacial conditions is highly significant for demographic developments among Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, particularly regarding Neanderthal replacement by Homo sapiens. However, this aspect remains largely unexplored. Perhaps the authors have insights into how described natural conditions and climatic fluctuations influenced the development of human communities in Europe?
Specific comments:

Line 316: South-West Asia? Why Asia?

Figs 3,4,5 B: What do the pollen percentages represent?

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-306-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Oliver A. Kern, 14 May 2025
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-306/essd-2024-306-AC1-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-306-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on essd-2024-306', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 May 2025

This work provides a landscape database reconstruction for the Late Pleistocene period (75,000-15,000 ka BP), online and free to use, using the already well used REVEALS approach. I found the background and methods well explained and clear ; I particularly appreciated the part explaining why raw pollen data are not directly proportional to the vegetation cover of a given species. It is significant achievement and will likely be of large us in different scientific communities.
However, there are a few small aspects that I didn't quite understand.
1-/ Line 304 : « The stadial-interstadial variability is primarily characterised by an increase in open-land percentages. » this sentences is unclear: it could be an increase or a decrease depending on the period (stadial or interstadial. Maybe something like « The stadial-interstadial variability is primarily characterised by a change in open-land percentages. » or be more specific as to the succession of changes from stadial to interstadial.
2-/ Line 305 : Is it really northward? My understanding is that it should be southward as the high latitudes are mainly covered by herbaceous. The tree-line shift to higher latitudes must have been with trees on south and herbaceous on north. Please clarify.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-306-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Oliver A. Kern, 14 May 2025
  
  The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-306/essd-2024-306-AC2-supplement.pdf
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-306-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

AR by Oliver A. Kern on behalf of the Authors (15 Jun 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (09 Aug 2025) by Birgit Heim

Dear authors
Many thanks for the replies to the reviews and revisions of your manuscript. Your manuscript and data publications are very interesting, as also both reviewers highlighted, I also specifically found your description of paleo-landcover on the activities of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers and chapter 3.4. an interesting discussion.We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript is accepted in ESSD for publication subject to minor editorial requirements before the final publication.

Editorial requirements:
Chapter 6 Data availability: could you provide in this chapter the direct link to your data Kern et al. with DOI (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.973049, the link in the manuscript only leads to the PANGAEA landing page)
Page 4 instead of the citation of the PANGAEA repository with the description of the repository by Felden et al. 2023, could you list here all the PANGAEA data publications that you used and cite the PANGAEA data publications also in the reference list, (all data publications that you re-used should appear in the reference list of your manuscript).

As for the ESSD manuscript of Schild et al. 2025 LegacyVegetation: Northern Hemisphere reconstruction of past plant cover and total tree cover from pollen archives of the last 14 kyr. Earth System Science Data, 17(5), 2007-2033, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2007-2025
we were asked by NEOTOMA to assure the traceability of the NEOTOMA source of the published data showing the NEOTOMA DOIs – e.g. Schild et al added the information of the NEOTOMA DOI in their data publication LegacyPollen2.0, an updated global taxonomically and temporally standardized fossil pollen dataset of 3728 palynological records https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.965907, Li et al., 2024 and finally discussed in the revised manuscript the reconstructed Northern hemisphere data reconstruction (not the gobal reconstruction): Herzschuh, U., Ewald, P., Schild, L., Li, C., and Böhmer, T.: LegacyVegetation: Northern Hemisphere reconstruction of past plant cover and total tree cover from pollen archives of the last 14 ka, PANGAEA [data set], https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.974798, 2025
(Eventually these PANGAEA data sets are also interesting for you to cite in your ESSD manuscript and reference list? This part is not meant as editorial requirement, only to be considered, if it is of use for your ESSD manuscript).

The solution in your case it that you could provide the NEOTOMA DOI for the NEOTOMA sources you used, e.g. in the form of a new Zenodo publication on your NEOTOMA metadata. You then can link in Zenodo your new Zenodo NEOTOMA DOI metadata publication to your PANGAEA data publication Kern et al. 2024 https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.973049, and ask PANGAEA to link your data publication to your new Zenodo metadata publication as related data publication, that usually can be done very fast in PANGAEA and is easily added to existing DOI data publications. During this process, please also ask PANGAEA to link your Code publications in Zenodo in form of ‘related code / software’ within your PANGAEA data publication.
Please also add then the Zenodo Metadata publication on the overview of the NEOTOMA DOIs to your ESSD manuscript chapter on data availability chapter and in the reference list

many thanks, and best regards, Birgit

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AR by Oliver A. Kern on behalf of the Authors (13 Aug 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (25 Sep 2025) by Birgit Heim

AR by Oliver A. Kern on behalf of the Authors (26 Sep 2025)

Short summary

We provide vegetation reconstructions during the Last Glacial period (60,000 to 20,000 years before present) using fossil pollen data and the REVEALS model. Understanding vegetation change in response to abrupt climate change is critical to enhance our understanding plant migration patterns and the demographic development and dispersal of anatomically modern humans into Europe. Our application PALVEG (https://oakern.shinyapps.io/PALVEG/), aims to make such data accessible to non-experts.