Seasonal patterns of pollen sedimentation in Lake Montcortès (Central Pyrenees) and potential applications to high-resolution paleoecology: a 2-year pilot study

Seasonal patterns of pollen and the use of pollen as a chronometer in the north‐western Loess Plateau of China

“…However, in general, the percentage pollen peaks coincided with the flowering season of each taxon, although almost all plant species exhibited a pollen sedimentation lag as indicated by the presence of pollen outside the flowering season (Rull et al , ; St. Jacques et al , ). This phenomenon probably resulted from the pollen dispersal modes.…”

“…Previous studies have clearly linked seasonal pollen deposition to the dating of sediments (Gauthier & Muñoz, ; Liew et al , ; López‐Merino et al , ; Lotter, ; Rull et al , ; St. Jacques et al , ; Tippett, ; Wu & Gray, ). These studies have shown that the pollen assemblages in different coloured layers displayed seasonal patterns and that pollen assemblages could be used to identify annual layers and therefore to date sediments.…”

“…Moreover, seasonal variations in pollen assemblages can even be used to distinguish seasonal layers in unlaminated sediments or those with indistinct laminations (Clark, ; Rull et al , ), such as reservoir sediments (Clark, ) and tidal flat sediments (Wang et al , ).…”

“…Pollen analysis can be used not only to reconstruct the vegetation and the environment at different timescales but can also be used in new ways as a chronometer (Clark, ; Rull et al , ). The hypothesis is that if there had been marked seasonality during the flowering and pollen production stages of terrestrial plants and the prompt transport of pollen to the lake, each sediment layer should contain the pollen grains that had been dispersed at the time of year when the layer was deposited.…”

“…To assess the reliability of pollen as a chronometer in laminated lake sediments, modern sedimentation has been monitored using sediment traps in a lake to record the seasonal variations in the sediment flux and composition, which has been a widely used method in studies of lakes with laminated sediments (Meszczankin & Noryśkiewicz, ; Rull et al , ; St. Jacques et al , ). Furthermore, instrumental monitoring data have been used to cross‐check the obtained chronology with characteristic time markers of historical events in the sediment succession (Ojala et al , , ).…”