Estimating the amount of compositional change in late-Quaternary pollen-stratigraphical data

Detrended canonical correspondence analysis is used to estimate the amount of palynological change or compositional turnover in ten Holocene pollen-stratigraphical sequences from Setesdal, southern Norway. The results, when the analyses are standardised for the same time interval, show that the highest amounts of change occurred at sites in the south of Setesdal where there is a richer tree flora. This primarily methodological study provides a robust approach to answering the question as to how much change is recorded within a pollen sequence, and to summarising the amount of change between sequences.