Palaeoecological evidence of pollen sequence in eastern Spain challenges existing concepts of vegetation change

Palaeoecological evidence from a pollen sequence in eastern Spain does not support the notion of potential vegetation as employed by the floristic-phy tosociological approach of vegetation classification. A middle Holocene rep lacement of Pinus forest by Quercus-dominated communities is interpreted as the result of increased fires in the surroundings of the site and suggests that sclerophyllous scrub in the region could not have been determined by climatic conditions as previously assumed. Therefore it cannot be considere d to be a climax state of vegetation. The possible role of anthropogenic an d random processes in this change should not be underestimated.