Pollen-inferred Late-Glacial and Holocene climate in southern Balkans (Lake Maliq)

A Late Glacial to Holocene record of environmental change from Lake Dojran (Macedonia, Greece)

“…Overall cold and dry climate between 12 500 and 11 500 cal yr BP at Lake Dojran can be attributed to the Younger Dryas, when 6 • C lower temperatures and arid conditions with 50 % less annual precipitation compared to modern conditions are reported from the northern Aegean region (Kotthoff et al, 2008a, the Sea of Marmara (Valsecchi et al, 2012), and from other terrestrial records in Italy (Allen et al, 2002), Macedonia (Bordon et al, 2009;, and Greece (Digerfeldt et al, 2000;Lawson et al, 2004). However, the cold and dry climate during the Younger Dryas is barely visible in geochemical and hydrological data from lakes Prespa and Ohrid (Fig.…”

“…Thereby, the higher δ 13 C org are probably rather a result of less allochthonous OM than of more productivity. The discrepancy between relatively high inflow and low erosion can be explained by the development of a dense vegetation cover in the catchment, such as observed around lakes Prespa and Maliq to the west (Bordon et al, 2009;Aufgebauer et al, 2012; and the Aegean region to the south and southeast (Kotthoff et al, 2008a). Extensive reed beds in the littoral areas of Lake Dojran could have also restrained allochthonous clastic supply by filtering and organic sediment supply by nutrient consumption (cf.…”

“…Although several paleoenvironmental records spanning the entire Holocene already exist from the Balkan region (e.g., Bordon et al, 2009;Wagner et al, 2009;Vogel et al, 2010a;, some suffer from poor radiocarbon chronologies (Wagner et al, 2009;Vogel et al, 2010a), or are inconsistent in terms of spatial variability and short-term climate events (Magny et al, 2003(Magny et al, , 2009Tzedakis, 2007;Berger and Guilaine, 2009). Furthermore, significant anthropogenic impact at least since the late Holocene (e.g., Willis, 1994;Wagner et al, 2009;Aufgebauer et al, 2012; complicates the reconstruction of climate change in the Balkan region (Vogel et al, 2010a).…”

Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantitative Climate Reconstructions Based on Late-Quaternary Biological Proxies

“…Bartlein & Whitlock 1993;Cheddadi et al 1998a;Kerwin et al 2004;Nakagawa et al 2002;Sawada et al 2004;Peryon et al 2005;Ortu et al 2006Ortu et al , 2008Ortu et al , 2010Feurdean et al 2008aFeurdean et al , 2008bBordon et al 2009;. MAT has been extended by Guiot (1990), Guiot et al (1989;1992), and Cheddadi et al (1998b) to reconstruct several climatic variables from pollen assemblages for the last glacial-interglacial cycle using so-called 'palaeobioclimatic operators' as weights to emphasise preferentially the climatic signal within fossil pollen data (see below).…”

“…However, if the climate response of the proxy is well understood, the use of a constraint may provide a more consistent set of results than those from an unconstrained MAT (e.g. Magny et al 2001Magny et al , 2003Muller et al 2003;Bordon et al 2009). The need of using such constraints raises questions about the suitability and robustness of MAT as a climate-reconstruction procedure when applied to pollen data, especially when the constraints applied are themselves derived from the pollen data (e.g.…”