Tag : Palynomorphs

New Delhi (The Hawk): New research has developed a modern analogue for pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) of Kaziranga National Park that can help in the interpretation of the past vegetation and climate in a region. Climate change is a dynamic process for the periodic vegetation shifts in a region. Nevertheless, the national parks are highly protected areas for the biodiversity conservation. The extreme and unpredictable weather, and an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, is one of the prime drivers for the biodiversity loss in National Parks. In these circumstances, the precision in future climatic assessment is important and requires rigorous climate models which are built utilizing modern and past climatic data inputs which emerged from well-dated proxy based palaeo-reconstructions. The Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in Assam, a corridor for immigration of members of the Indo-Malayan fauna into the Indian sub-region, is a critical reserve for tropical species, having served as a gene reservoir for these taxa during glacial periods. With this in mind scientists from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), an autonomous institution of DST have developed a modern analogue dataset based on pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) from different vegetation settings across the Kaziranga National Park of Assam for the interpretation of the past vegetation and climate in a region. This study evaluates both the strength and weaknesses of the biotic proxy and assesses how reliably modern pollen and NPP analogue can identify different ecological environments and could be used as a baseline in interpreting Late Quaternary palaeo-environmental and ecological changes more accurately in this region. Moder ...