Estimating the hydrogen isotopic composition of past precipitation using leaf-waxes from western Africa

Collins, James A; Schefuß, Enno; Mulitza, Stefan; Prange, Matthias; Werner, Martin; Tharammal, Thejna; Paul, André; Wefer, Gerold

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.01.007

Cited by 103 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 122 publications

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“…S3). Application of a vegetation correction to δD wax values in modern lake sediments and soils (δD wax-corr ; SI Text) to account for differences in the apparent D/H fractionation between environmental water and plant waxes in different plant groups (25) improves its correlation with annual precipitation. Residual variance in δD wax-corr values from lake surface sediments and topsoils, on the order of ±10‰ (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought, agricultural adaptation, and sociopolitical collapse in the Maya Lowlands

Douglas

Pagani

Canuto

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

175

111

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Paleoclimate records indicate a series of severe droughts was associated with societal collapse of the Classic Maya during the Terminal Classic period (∼800-950 C.E.). Evidence for drought largely derives from the drier, less populated northern Maya Lowlands but does not explain more pronounced and earlier societal disruption in the relatively humid southern Maya Lowlands. Here we apply hydrogen and carbon isotope compositions of plant wax lipids in two lake sediment cores to assess changes in water availability and land use in both the northern and southern Maya lowlands. We show that relatively more intense drying occurred in the southern lowlands than in the northern lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, consistent with earlier and more persistent societal decline in the south. Our results also indicate a period of substantial drying in the southern Maya Lowlands from ∼200 C.E. to 500 C.E., during the Terminal Preclassic and Early Classic periods. Plant wax carbon isotope records indicate a decline in C 4 plants in both lake catchments during the Early Classic period, interpreted to reflect a shift from extensive agriculture to intensive, waterconservative maize cultivation that was motivated by a drying climate. Our results imply that agricultural adaptations developed in response to earlier droughts were initially successful, but failed under the more severe droughts of the Terminal Classic period.Maya civilization | drought | societal collapse | climate adaptation | compound-specific isotope analysis

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought, agricultural adaptation, and sociopolitical collapse in the Maya Lowlands

Douglas

Pagani

Canuto

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

175

111

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Nevertheless, δD wax studies from offshore of NW Africa covering the African Humid Period (∼ 15-5 ka) yield a robust humid signal among different records (Niedermeyer et al, 2010;Collins et al, 2013;Kuechler et al, 2013;Tierney et al, 2017), although the vegetation of this African Humid Period had no modern analogue (Watrin et al, 2009). Watrin et al emphasize that instead of a homogenous latitudinal shift of vegetation zones as a whole, individual plant species likely have an advantage over others.…”

Section: Plant-wax Provenance and Vegetation Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid insolation forcing of Pliocene monsoon dynamics in West Africa

2018

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Abstract. The Pliocene is regarded as a potential analogue for future climate with conditions generally warmer-thantoday and higher-than-preindustrial atmospheric CO 2 levels. Here we present the first orbitally resolved records of continental hydrology and vegetation changes from West Africa for two Pliocene time intervals (5.0-4.6 Ma, 3.6-3.0 Ma), which we compare with records from the last glacial cycle (Kuechler et al., 2013). Our results indicate that changes in local insolation alone are insufficient to explain the full degree of hydrologic variations. Generally two modes of interacting insolation forcings are observed: during eccentricity maxima, when precession was strong, the West African monsoon was driven by summer insolation; during eccentricity minima, when precession-driven variations in local insolation were minimal, obliquity-driven changes in the summer latitudinal insolation gradient became dominant. This hybrid monsoonal forcing concept explains orbitally controlled tropical climate changes, incorporating the forcing mechanism of latitudinal gradients for the Pliocene, which probably increased in importance during subsequent Northern Hemisphere glaciations.

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“…Correcting δD wax for vegetation impacts using paired δ 13 C wax improves the inference of δD P (see fig. S1 and the Supplementary Materials) ( 22 , 23 ). In turn, δD P has a strong ( r = −0.72) log-normal relationship with the amount of rainfall in western Sahara (see fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%