Late Quaternary record of the vegetation and catchment-related changes from Lake Paravani (Javakheti, South Caucasus)

Mid Holocene vegetation reconstruction from Vanevan peat (south-eastern shore of Lake Sevan, Armenia)

“…Moreover, similar and contemporaneous rapid environmental changes have been documented in other records in the Near East ( Fig.8; e.g. Stevens et al, 2006;Shumilovskikh et al, 2012;Messager et al, 2013;Joannin et al, 2014). During the following two thousand years (from ca.…”

“…BP. Open-land vegetation observed south east of Sevan Lake matches similar pollen assemblages from Lesser Caucasus and Anatolian area: in Armenia (Shamb-2 travertine, Ollivier et al, 2011;Zarishat, Joannin et al, 2014), in Georgia (Paravani, Messager et al, 2013), in Turkey (Van Lake, Van Zeist et Woldring, 1978Eski Acigol, Roberts et al, 2001) and in Iran (Lake Urmia, Bottema, 1986, Djamali et al, 2010Zeribar, Van Zeist and Bottema, 1977;Mirabad, Stevens et al, 2006). Similar open-land vegetation are also confirmed in pollen records in a synthesis from the Balkan peninsula to Southern Siberia (Wright et al, 2003), in lowland Bulgaria (Filipova-Marinova et al, 2013;Connor et al, 2013), in the Black Sea marine record 22GC3 (Shumilovskikh et al, 2012), in Caspian Sea (e.g.…”

“…According to Havinga (1984), dominance of Cichorioideae is associated with low taxa diversity and inconsistencies in the pollen assemblage. At Vanevan, taxa diversity is indeed low, but pollen assemblage consistency appears robust as several steppic taxa are observed (such as Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Carduaceae, Rubiaceae …), together with trees such as Ephedra distachya t., and E. fragilis t.. Contemporaneously, similar pollen assemblages existed at Zarishat fen (Joannin et al, 2014) and Lake Paravani (Messager et al, 2013). Therefore, Cichorioideae are widespread before ca.…”

“…Whether a forested phase is documented during the Mid Holocene in recent studies across Georgia (e.g. Connor and Kvavadze, 2008;Messager et al, 2013), only low resolution pollen analyses (Takhtajyan, 1941;Tumanyan, 1971;Tumajanov and Tumanyan, 1973;Sayadyan et al, 1977;Sayadyan, 1978) suggest that forests once existed in Armenia. Moreover, these studies (in Russian) are not up to today's standards (no dates or few datings on molluscs, up to 40% unidentified palynomorphs).…”

Leaf wax <i>n</i>-alkanes in modern plants and topsoils from eastern Georgia (Caucasus) – implications for reconstructing regional paleovegetation

“…n-alkane patterns derived from regional sediment archives. Such lacustrine, loess-paleosol, open-air archaeological or fluvial archives were increasingly investigated during the last years and could potentially be used for n-alkane derived vegetation reconstructions (Messager et al, 2013;Joannin et al, 2014;Suchodoletz et al, 2015;Wolf et al, 2016;Egeland et al, 2016).…”