MACROFOSSILS AND POLLEN REPRESENTING FORESTS OF THE PRE-TAUPO VOLCANIC-ERUPTION (C.1850 YR BP) ERA AT PUREORA AND BENNEYDALE, CENTRAL NORTH-ISLAND, NEW-ZEALAND

Micro- and macrofossil data from the remains of forests overwhelmed an d buried at Pureora and Benneydale during the Taupo eruption (c. 1850 conventional radiocarbon yr BP) were compared. Classification of relat ive abundance data separated the techniques, rather than the locations , because the two primary clusters comprised pollen and litter/wood. T his indicates that the pollen:litter/wood within-site comparisons (Pur eora and Benneydale are 20 km apart) are not reliable. Plant macrofoss ils represented mainly local vegetation, while pollen assemblages repr esented a combination of local and regional vegetation. However, using ranked abundance and presence/absence data, both macrofossils and pol len at Pureora and Benneydale indicated conifer/broadleaved forest, of similar forest type and species composition at each site. This sugges ts that the forests destroyed by the eruption were typical of mid-alti tude west Taupo forests, and that either data set (pollen or macrofoss ils) would have been adequate for regional forest interpretation. The representation of c. 1850 yr BP pollen from the known buried forest ta xa was generally consistent with trends determined by modern compariso ns between pollen and their source vegetation, but with a few exceptio ns. A pollen profile from between the Mamaku Tephra (c. 7250 yr BP) an d the Taupo Ignimbrite indicated that the Benneydale forest had been m arkedly different in species dominance compared with the forest that w as destroyed during the Taupo eruption. These differences probably ref lect changes in drainage, and improvements in climate and/or soil fert ility over the middle Holocene.