A compilation of Western European terrestrial records 60–8 ka BP: towards an understanding of latitudinal climatic gradients

Abstract

a b s t r a c tTerrestrial records of past climatic conditions, such as lake sediments and speleothems, provide data of great importance for understanding environmental changes. However, unlike marine and ice core records, terrestrial palaeodata are often not available in databases or in a format that is easily accessible to the non-specialist. As a consequence, many excellent terrestrial records are unknown to the broader palaeoclimate community and are not included in compilations, comparisons, or modelling exercises. Here we present a compilation of Western European terrestrial palaeo-records covering, entirely or partially, the 60e8-ka INTIMATE time period. The compilation contains 56 natural archives, including lake records, speleothems, ice cores, and terrestrial proxies in marine records. The compilation is limited to include records of high temporal resolution and/or records that provide climate proxies or quantitative reconstructions of environmental parameters, such as temperature or precipitation, and that are of relevance and interest to a broader community. We briefly review the different types of terrestrial archives, their respective proxies, their interpretation and their application for palaeoclimatic reconstructions. We also discuss the importance of independent chronologies and the issue of record Quaternary Science Reviews 106 (2014) 167e185 synchronization. The aim of this exercise is to provide the wider palaeo-community with a consistent compilation of high-quality terrestrial records, to facilitate model-data comparisons, and to identify key areas of interest for future investigations. We use the compilation to investigate Western European latitudinal climate gradients during the deglacial period and, despite of poorly constrained chronologies for the older records, we summarize the main results obtained from NW and SW European terrestrial records before the LGM.

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

“…(Klaus, 1989) are considered to be Tertiary relics and are located in the wider region of Lake Ohrid. These include populations of Pinus peuce (Macedonian pine) at high elevation in the Voras mountains in Greece (to the south-east of Lake Ohrid) (Dafis et al, 1997), and in Mavrovo (to the north) and Pelister (to the east) National Parks in FYROM (Panagiotopoulos, 2013;Panagiotopoulos et al, 2013; http://www. exploringmacedonia.com/national-parks.nspx).…”

“…It is thought to be the oldest extant lake in Europe, with an uninterrupted lacustrine sedimentation probably starting between 1.2 and 1.9 Ma Lindhorst et al, 2015). The sensitive ecosystem response of the Dessarete lakes Ohrid and Prespa to climate variability during the last glacial-interglacial cycle has been documented in several studies dealing with terrestrial vegetation composition and land cover (Lézine et al, 2010;Wagner et al, 2009Wagner et al, , 2010Panagiotopoulos, 2013;Panagiotopoulos et al, 2013Panagiotopoulos et al, , 2014, with macrophytes and phytoplankton communities (Panagiotopoulos et al, 2014;Cvetkoska et al, 2015a, b), and with stable isotope studies (Leng et al, 2010). These findings illustrate the value of the "sister" lakes Ohrid and Prespa as environmental archives.…”

“…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).…”

“…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).…”

“…Existing highresolution pollen studies focusing on different time intervals (e.g. Tzedakis et al, 2004bTzedakis et al, , 2009Tzedakis, 2007;Fletcher et al, 2010;Margari et al, 2010;Moreno et al, 2015) offer a more detailed picture of ecosystem dynamics in the Mediterranean region. High-resolution studies using the exceptional Lake Orhid archive are in progress for selected intervals (e.g.…”