DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1bp06
title: Data from: Modern pollen from small hollows reflects Athrotaxis cupressoides density across a wildfire gradient in subalpine forests of the Central Plateau, Tasmania, Australia

description: Pollen assemblages from 50 small hollows were used to resolve fire-caused
 vegetation patterns in a ~2-km2 subalpine landscape on the Central Plateau
 of Tasmania, Australia. Sites were characterized by varying abundance of
 the dominant tree species, Athrotaxis cupressoides, reflecting mortality
 from a wildfire that occurred 53 years prior to sampling. Sites were
 classified a priori based on fire-related Athrotaxis mortality as burned
 (100% standing dead), unburned (&lt;5% standing dead), and mixed
 (intermediate proportions). Non-parametric analysis of variance and
 discriminant analysis were used to quantify the variability in key pollen
 taxa and pollen ratios among burn classifications. The ratio of Athrotaxis
 to Poaceae pollen was the clearest metric distinguishing among burn
 classifications. When discriminant analysis was informed with data from
 the eight most dominant pollen data, samples were classified with high
 accuracy (0.96–0.98). Macroscopic charcoal concentrations varied widely
 among sites, but median values were consistent with inferred fire
 patterns, increasing in abundance from unburned to burned sites. The
 results support the use of small hollows to resolve fine-scale vegetation
 patterns (e.g. within 100 m of a site). The discriminant analysis function
 was also applied to five late-Holocene pollen samples from the study area,
 to test the potential of these methods to classify samples with unknown
 group assignments. The posterior probability of assigned group membership
 ranged from 0.85 to 0.99, demonstrating the similarity of the fossil
 pollen to the calibration dataset. Our calibration dataset provides a
 means to classify fossil samples from the region in terms of Athrotaxis
 cover and fire-caused mortality. This approach could be applied to other
 regions to quantify disturbance-related vegetation patterns or spatial
 heterogeneity over Holocene timescales.
description: Raw pollen and charcoal
 counts from surface samplesRaw pollen / spore
 counts for each of 50 surface samples, organized with rows as sites and
 columns as taxa (n = 55). Macroscopic charcoal concentration (#/cm3) was
 based on charcoal counts from sediment subsamples (distinct from pollen
 subsamples); charcoal data are in columns BL-BN. See "ReadMe"
 file for more information.TAS_SS_16_11_11.csvreadMeA description of the entire data archive.CP13_SS_analysisMatlab script to create Figure 2 in Morris et al. The script calls upon the data in the file TAS_SS_16_11_11.csv. To run, change the file path to lead to the location of this data file, under the "Load data" heading in the script.CP13_SS_discrimAnalysisR script that performs Discriminant Analysis on the surface sample dataset and produced Figure 3 in Morris et al. The script calls upon the data in the file TAS_SS_16_11_11.csv, and CP13_10A_pollen_16_11_10.csv. To run, change the file path to lead to the location of this data file, under the "Load data" heading in the script. To run this script, set the working directory to the directory that contains both of these files, under the "Clear and set work space" heading in the script.CP13_10A_pollen_16_11_10Pollen data from core CP13_10A, used in Morris et al. Note, only several samples from this dataset are used in this paper, for application of the discriminant analysis function.