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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-4084</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Spatial Downscaling of Pollen-Based Vegetation Reconstructions into Paleo Land Cover Maps</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Schild</surname>
<given-names>Laura</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2853-6419</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lisovski</surname>
<given-names>Simeon</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6399-0035</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ewald</surname>
<given-names>Peter</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Walsch</surname>
<given-names>Julia</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Caus</surname>
<given-names>Danu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0597-8844</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Herzschuh</surname>
<given-names>Ulrike</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Research Unit Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Helmholtz Centre Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Helmholtz AI, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>22</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>33</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Laura Schild et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4084/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4084/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4084/egusphere-2026-4084.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4084/egusphere-2026-4084.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Past land cover dynamics provide important context for understanding long-term ecosystem responses to climatic change, but paleoecological records are typically sparse, irregular, and site-based. Here, we present a spatial downscaling framework that transforms pollen-derived vegetation reconstructions into gridded paleo land cover maps. The pipeline first translates pollen-based vegetation composition into land cover class frequencies, then distributes these classes within pollen source areas using environmental similarity, and finally applies a U-Net-based interpolation approach to generate spatially continuous reconstructions. We apply the framework to Alaska and western Canada, producing 300 m land cover reconstructions across 15 land cover classes and 119 time slices. The source-area product preserves the direct link to pollen records and contains approximately 2.56 billion reconstructed pixels, while the U-Net-based product extends these reconstructions to continuous spatial coverage across the full study region. Reconstructed land cover trends show broad stability during the late Holocene, with stronger changes around 10 ka BP, including declining evergreen needle-leaved forest cover toward older time slices and corresponding changes in sparse vegetation and shrubland. Relative uncertainty estimates indicate higher uncertainty in forested regions and increasing uncertainty with age, reflecting both class ambiguity and reduced paleo-record support. An example analysis of elevational forest dynamics demonstrates the potential of the dataset for spatially explicit paleoecological applications. The framework provides a bridge between site-based pollen records and landscape-scale analyses, while emphasizing that reconstructed maps represent model-based estimates rather than direct observations of past environments.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Helmholtz Association</funding-source>
<award-id>ZT-I-PF-5-01</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt</funding-source>
<award-id>BMFTR 03F0944A</award-id>
<award-id>01LP1510C</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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<back>
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</article>