Mid‐Holocene and glacial‐maximum vegetation geography of the northern continents and Africa

BIOME 6000 is an international project to map vegetation globally at mid‐Holocene (6000 14C yr bp) and last glacial maximum (LGM, 18,000 14C yr bp), with a view to evaluating coupled climate‐biosphere model results. Primary palaeoecological data are assigned to biomes using an explicit algorithm based on plant functional types. This paper introduces the second Special Feature on BIOME 6000. Site‐based global biome maps are shown with data from North America, Eurasia (except South and Southeast Asia) and Africa at both time periods. A map based on surface samples shows the method’s skill in reconstructing present‐day biomes.

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