A 600,000 year long continental pollen record from Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey)

Vegetation and environmental changes during the last interglacial in eastern Anatolia (Turkey): a new high-resolution pollen record from Lake Van

“…During summer, the extension of the subtropical high-pressure system strongly affects the tracks of the North Atlantic westerlies. Warm and dry air reach the interior plateau of eastern Anatolia with average temperatures of 22°C in July (Roberts and Wright, 1993;Litt et al, 2014). During winter, cold air masses from continental Asia (Siberian high-pressure system) influence the Lake Van region with mean January temperatures below 0°C.…”

“…The robust chronology of the Lake Van sedimentary profile (Stockhecke et al, 2014a) extends over the last 600 ka. Initial low-resolution studies Litt et al, 2014;Randlett et al, 2014) revealed that Lake Van sediments document with unprecedented detail environmental changes and thus contribute to the understanding of regional response to climate variability of the last six glacial-interglacial cycles.…”

Pollen-based paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change at Lake Ohrid (south-eastern Europe) during the past 500 ka

“…They are the composite record of Bouchet/Praclaux in southern France, spanning the last ∼ 450 ka (Reille et al, 2000), Valle di Castiglione in central Italy, spanning the last ∼ 300 ka (Follieri et al, 1988(Follieri et al, , 1989, Ioannina in western Greece, spanning the last ∼ 480 ka (Tzedakis, 1994b), Kopais, in south-eastern Greece, spanning the last ∼ 500 ka (Okuda et al, 2001), and Tenaghi Philippon, the ∼ 1.35 million-year old European lacustrine record from north-eastern Greece (Tzedakis et al, 2006;Pross et al, 2015). In the Near East, long continental sedimentary sequences have been studied in Lake Van (eastern Turkey) spanning the last ∼ 600 ka (Litt et al, 2014), in Lake Urmia (north-western Iran) spanning ∼ 200 ka (Djamali et al, 2008) and in lake Yamounneh (Lebanon) spanning the last ∼ 400 ka (Gasse et al, 2015). However, these sediment cores have not been studied with high temporal resolution, which is a precondition for a deeper understanding of the palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic evolution of terrestrial ecosystems (Brauer et al, 2007;Magny et al, 2013;Moreno et al, 2015).…”

Cyclostratigraphic studies of sediments from Lake Van (Turkey) based on their uranium contents obtained from downhole logging and paleoclimatic implications

“…Litt et al (2009) proposed a sedimentation rate of 50 cm/ka for the AR site. Because that estimate was based on short cores (3-9 m overall length), it does (Litt et al 2014;Stockhecke et al 2014b) are marked by blue circles. U res -residuals of U data after detrending not contradict our results of 33 cm/ka for the interval from 120 mblf to the lake floor (interval II).…”

“…Stockhecke et al (2014b) determined that the Lake Van record covers a time span of approximately 600 ka. These estimates are based on correlations of TOC trends with marine isotope stages (MIS) and nine 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages (Litt et al 2014) and thus are based mainly on proxy data, the interpretation of which is ambiguous. The estimated sedimentation rates must be verified with dating methods.…”