Piacenzian to late Pleistocene flora and vegetation in Italy: a moving sketch

The rich late Neogene and Quaternary stratigraphical record for the Mediterranean area is particularly useful for the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments and palaeoclimate changes. 66 Italian pollen sites (38 terrestrial and 28 marine) have been selected to cover the 3.60 - 0.0117 Ma time-interval. Pollen reveals evidence for the main changes in both flora composition and vegetation structure, tracing the imprint of increasingly cooler climates on Italian vegetation since the latest Pliocene. The role of both altitudinal gradients and physiographic reorganizations as well as of major taxa replacements and their extinctions-times is evaluated by the study of calibrated pollen records. The response of flora and vegetation to glacial/interglacial (G/I) cycles is especially well expressed from the beginning of the Pleistocene, and across the Early-Middle Pleistocene climate transition when a major decrease in temperature, during both G/I phases, occurred. Alternations of Artemisia steppe and thermophilous forest illustrate the overall vegetation changes during G/I cycles. However, different patterns in the G/I vegetational cycle have been detected in both northern and southern pollen sites. The Late Pleistocene high-resolution pollen records document the vegetation response to rapid climate changes such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger “cycles” and Heinrich stadials, associated with millennial to sub-millennial events.