THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MODERN POLLEN SAMPLES AND ENVIRONMENT IN THEHUMID TROPICS REGION OF NORTHEASTERN AUSTRALIA

Pollen samples from moss polsters and litter were taken from 14 floris tically-described rainforest and marginal rainforest sites considered to cover a large range of existing environmental variation. One hundre d and forty pollen types were identified of which only a small number could be related to parent species. However, a number of pollen types had systematic representation in relation to major environmental param eters, and pattern analyses revealed marked similarities in spatial di stributions of sites based on pollen and species data. Site ordination demonstrated high correlation between pollen variation and annual and seasonal attributes of climate as well as soil fertility indicating t he potential for refining palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from pol len diagrams produced from the region.