Vegetation development in the Sulzkar biotope, Gesäuse National Park

Understanding and managing vegetation in the Gesäuse National Park is beneficial if it is known how vegetation has evolved over the past millennia and how the present composition of forests has emerged. The recent forest history can be shown from written sources about the 9th century. For the millennia before, pollen-analytic studies can reconstruct both the general traits of vegetation changes, as well as with sufficient temporal resolution of the pollen profile and ev. Local events, prehistoric alpine pasture farms, forest boundary fluctuations, etc. are detected using large-scale remnants. No vegetation-historical studies have been carried out in the area of Gesäuse National Park. On the other hand, the Griesanger moor, which covers the last 40005000 years), the moors on the Neuburgerstattel, the Haselbach and the Pfarralm (Roman and younger), a medieval coal mill on the municipal hut and the lake sediments of the Leopoldstein lake last about 16000 years have been extensively studied in the margins. However, the results are only partially transferable to the territory of the National Park because, on the one hand, the pollen content of the deposits on the southern edge of the national park is a mixture of the vegetation on lime (northern catchment area) and that of the Grauwackenzone (southern catchment area), on the other hand, the Leopoldsteiner See lies at a lower sea level than most of the national park’s land. A pollen diagram from the actual area of the national park would therefore be desirable.