Vegetation development in the Sulzkar biotope, Gesäuse National Park

Understanding and managing vegetation in the Gesäuse National Park is advantageous if it is known how vegetation has developed over the past millennia and how the current composition of forests has emerged. The recent forest history can be shown from written sources around the 9th century. For the millennia before, pollen analysis studies can reconstruct the general characteristics of vegetation changes, as well as with sufficient temporal resolution of the pollen profile and ev. Local events, prehistoric pastures, forest boundary fluctuations, etc. can be detected with the help of large-scale residual investigations. No vegetation history studies have been carried out in the area of the Gesäuse National Park. In the peripheral area, on the other hand, the Griesangermoor, which covers the last 40005000 years, the moors on the Neuburgerstattel, in the Haselbach and on the Pfarralm (Roman times and younger), a medieval coal mine on the Gemeindealm and the lake sediments of Lake Leopoldstein were extensively examined for the last 16,000 years. However, the results are only partially transferable to the area of the national park because, on the one hand, the pollen content of the deposits on the southern edge of the national park represents a mixture of vegetation on lime (northern catchment area) and that from the greywacken zone (south catchment area), on the other hand, Lake Leopoldstein is located at lower sea level than most of the national park area. A pollen diagram from the actual area of the national park would therefore be desirable.