Considering lacustrine erosion records and the De Ploey erosion model in an examination of mountain catchment erosion susceptibility and precipitation reconstruction

Abstract

Reconstruction of paleo-precipitation can provide an insight into past climate and precipitation. De Ploey et al. (1995) presents a highly simplified erosion equation to consider precipitation and erosion susceptibility. This empirical model allows estimation of total precipitation and erosion susceptibility across a range of catchment characteristics (including catchment area, slope, elevation, vegetation cover) and when limited catchment or meteorological data is available. The presented study tests the De Ploey equation using dated lacustrine records of catchment soil deposition both spatially and temporally. The objective is to examine the De Ploey equation's ability and efficiency in reconstructing past long-term precipitation using sedimentological parameters. The erosion susceptibility factor is described as a 'black box' value by De Ploey et al. (1995). This research unravels the erosion susceptibility variable, identifying it to change spatially and temporally according to precipitation, vegetation cover and composition (the extent of tree establishment across the catchment), total lacustrine deposition and geochemical signatures in the archive. Calculation of the erosion sustainability variable and it's use within the De Ploey erosion equation illustrate a reconstruction of an indicative mean annual precipitation and erosion susceptibility change over the recent period (∼100 years).

Anthropogenic versus natural control on lacustrine sediment yield records from the French Massif Central

“…(2) multi-proxy analyses of sediment cores and soils profiles, including dry bulk density (DBD), Rock-Eval 6 pyrolysis (RE, Behar et al, 2001;Disnar et al, 2003;Sebag et al, 2006b) and quantitative organic petrography (QOP, Sebag et al, 2006a;Graz et al, 2010;Simonneau et al, 2013aSimonneau et al, , 2013bSimonneau et al, , 2014Chassiot et al, 2018;Allen et al, 2020); and…”

“…While AOM was identified in lake sediments only, the presence of LCF and rAP in both soil horizons and sediments were used to develop a source-to-sink approach to quantify terrigenous fluxes (Simonneau et al, 2013a(Simonneau et al, , 2013b(Simonneau et al, , 2014Foucher et al, 2014;Chassiot et al, 2018;Allen et al, 2020). The quantification of rAP within both lake sediments and topsoil A-horizons allows to convert the concentration of rAP measured in lake sediments into the mass of eroded soil transported and stored to the lake (Fig.…”

Spatial and temporal patterns of upland vegetation over the last 200 years in the northern pyrenees: Example from the Bassiès valley, Ariège, France

“…Each of the 18 taxa was assigned to one of the land-cover categories based on their dominance in each landcover type (Table 3). The integration of floristic data from local forest inventories (Mazier et al, 2022) explains the modification of the pollen taxon groupings compared to those of Marquer et al (2020) which was based on expert judgement, especially the integration of Abies and Picea in the broadleaved forest instead of the conifers category (Table 3). The mean and standard errors of each category were obtained following the delta method (Stuart et al, 1994).…”

“…Previous studies have already demonstrated vegetation patterning and composition differences using pollen percentages only (Davies and Tipping, 2004;Fyfe, 2012;Fyfe and Woodbridge, 2012;Poska et al, 2008a) or LRA-based estimates (Cui et al, 2014(Cui et al, , 2013Fyfe et al, 2018;Hultberg et al, 2014;Mehl et al, 2015;Mehl and Hjelle, 2016;Poska et al, 2018;Prøsch-Danielsen et al, 2020). Few studies have focused on the last centuries, with a temporal and spatial resolution high enough to capture the short-term land-use changes that occurred during certain critical time intervals such as the last two hundred years (Allen et al, 2020;Marquer et al, 2020a;Mazier et al, 2015). This period witnessed an unprecedented turnover from "traditional" to postmodern landscapes characterized by significant differences in the dynamics, speed and scale of mountainous landscape change (Cevasco and Moreno, 2013).…”