POLLEN RECORDS TELL A STORY ABOUT SÃO MIGUEL ISLAND

Oceanic islands, like the Azores archipelago have been considered as natural laboratories providing significant clues to ecological, biogeographic and evolutionary knowledge. Even though palaeoecological records are comparatively scarce, they can also provide significant information on these issues.

In an article just published by the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews, an international team, which includes CIBIO-InBIO researchers Pedro Raposeiro and Vítor Gonçalves reported the palynological reconstruction of the vegetation and landscape dynamics of São Miguel Island before and after human settlement using the sediments of Lake Azul. The outcomes of this study, which have just been highlighted by the national newspaper Expresso, report several changes of landscape and vegetation, forests, cereal cultivation and alterations on the levels of Lake Azul due to a combination of climatic and anthropogenic drivers. The pollen records also gathered suggest that São Miguel was already colonized by humans, 150 years before the official settlement.
Although other palynological records are very rare, the outcomes of this study were also compared with records for other Azorean islands, like Pico and Flores. The results indicate that lowland lakes near the coast are suitable to report potential early colonization events, opening new avenues for palaeoecological studies focusing on this kind of environments.

To know more about this topic, please follow the link below:
“S. Miguel já era povoada 150 anos antes da descoberta oficial dos Açores” | Expresso| February 20, 2017 (Information available in Portuguese)

To access the original article, please click here.