Holocene and Late Pleistocene climate in the sub-Mediterranean continental environment: A speleothem record from Poleva Cave (Southern Carpathians, Romania)

Neolithic human impact on the landscapes of North-East Hungary inferred from pollen and settlement records

“…In SH-WOOD a single peak in palynological richness is seen in the uppermost sample, at 7950 cal B.P. (27), this coincides with a decrease in AP:NAP ratios and may suggest woodland disturbance in the vicinity of this core. Although local settlement is not indicated by archaeological fieldwalking, the fall in arboreal pollen percentages and AP:NAP ratios between 7950 and 7450 cal B.P.…”

“…For site locations see Figure 1b. (Reimer et al 2004); (3) PP10 stalagmite  18 O record from Poleva Cave, SW Romania (Constantin et al 2007); (4) Macrofossil based relative lake level changes in Lake St Ana, Romanian Carpathians; the curve shows a hydrological gradient from shallow to deep lake represented here by principal component axis 2 ); (5) High lake level phases in West-Central Europe according to Magny (2007); (6) organic content, relative frequencies of pollen types and green algae, ratio of arboreal and non-arboreal pollen (AP:NAP) and microcharcoal concentrations from SH-WOOD, Sarló-hát, NE Hungary (this study); (7) Summer (red curve) and winter (black curve) insolation values (W/m 2 ) at 60 o N (Berger and Loutre, 1991 Fairbairn (1992Fairbairn ( , 1993 and the main core of the taxon list enumerates his data. In addition, taxa not found by Fairbairn but determined by Gyulai (2010) in course of an independent survey of the Csőszhalom tell are shown and marked (GY-CSH).…”

Constraining Holocene hydrological changes in the Carpathian–Balkan region using speleothem δ<sup>18</sup>O and pollen-based temperature reconstructions

“…Several Holocene speleothem records are available from the Romanian Carpathians (Onac et al, 2002;Tȃmaş et al, 2005;Constantin et al, 2007). Trends towards higher values seen in these time series throughout the Holocene were interpreted as reflecting rising temperatures.…”

“…Consequently, specific temperature or hydrological information is rarely directly quantifiable from speleothem stable isotope records. An example is the muted or even absent signal around the 8.2 ka cold event in speleothem δ 18 O records throughout Romania (Tȃmaş et al, 2005;Constantin et al, 2007), despite this event being clearly identifiable in peat bog pollen records (Feurdean et al, 2007), in Balkan lake records (Pross et al, 2009;Panagiotopoulos et al, 2013), as well as in the Aegean Sea (Marino et al, 2009). This ambiguity of speleothem δ 18 O records with respect to climatic events and transitions raises the question of how more specific information on the nature of climate change can be extracted from this proxy.…”

“…1), in an area under periodical Mediterranean hydroclimate influences (Bojariu and Paliu, 2001;Apostol, 2008). We combine information from regionally averaged pollen-based temperature reconstructions from Europe across the Holocene (Davis et al, 2003) with the new oxygen isotope data from Ascunsȃ Cave, alongside a detailed comparison with published speleothem records from Romania (Onac et al, 2002;Tȃ-maş et al, 2005;Constantin et al, 2007) and the Mediterranean (McDermott et al, 1999;Bar-Matthews et al, 2003;Drysdale et al, 2006;Vollweiler et al, 2006;Verheyden et al, 2008;Fleitmann et al, 2009). We also attempt to constrain the regional-scale hydrologic information inherent by speleothem δ 18 O change across the Holocene, focusing on Mediterranean climate trends observable after 6 ka Dragotȃ and Baciu, 2008).…”