Interpreting pollen diagrams from wetlands: pollen representation in surface samples from Oil Well Bog, southern Ontario

Pollen and spore analysis of surface sediment samples from 45 points within Oil Well Bog, a coniferous swamp near Cambridge, Ontario, was used to determine the possibility of identifying different wetland vegetation communities from their palynological record, and to assess the effects of variable wetland vegetation on the pollen representation of surrounding upland communities. The data obtained were mapped for individual taxa to allow direct comparison of the spatial patterns of vegetation abundance and the associated palynological assemblages, and cluster analysis was used to identify palynologically similar assemblages. Some wetland communities, such as swamp dominated by black spruce, do have distinctive pollen signatures, but not all the vegetational diversity observed is reflected in the palynological data, with similar pollen assemblages deriving from some communities which are vegetationally very different (e.g., shrub swamps dominated by Chamaedaphne calyculata and Ilex verticillata). The wetland pollen assemblages do reflect much of the floristic diversity of the surrounding uplands, although the different communities receive varying proportions of their pollen influx from upland sources (varying from less than 5% to over 90%), and wide variations in the percentage of a given upland pollen morphotype can be found within quite a short distance, depending on the nature of local wetland communities.Key words: palynology, swamp, surface samples, wetland.