The Paper Trail

How biogenic silica can help reconstruct landscape changes in the Netherlands

September 22, 2022 Henk Kombrink Season 1 Episode 10
The Paper Trail
How biogenic silica can help reconstruct landscape changes in the Netherlands
Show Notes

Until recently, little work was done using biogenic silica or phytoliths for palaeoecological reconstructions in the Netherlands. This is because most studies rely on pollen or macrofossil remains. However, phytoliths are potentially quite powerful because they do not suffer from the same level of organic degradation as pollen or macrofossil do. For that reason, Iris de Wolf sampled a variety of vegetation types in the Netherlands in order to see if the phytolith assemblages found are markedly different from each other. That happens to be the case, as Iris explains in this podcast.