Tropical vegetational change in the late Pleistocene of New Caledonia

The archaic and puzzling record of Lake Xere Wapo, New Caledonia

“…Wood fragments have been terra australis 32 noted at various depths in the Lake Xere Wapo sediments. Wood from a similar context in Lake Suprin (see Figure 1), but with better preservation, has been identified as the freshwater mangrove conifer Retrophyllum minor (Hope and Pask 1998). The wood from Lake Xere Wapo is from several taxa, including R. minor, and is indicative of considerable fluctuations in water level.…”

Vegetation histories from the Fijian Islands: Alternative records of human impact

“…Lower sea levels tripled the land area of the largest island and probably resulted in enhanced differentiation between the windward and dry sides. While Pleistocene records from Fiji are restricted to the orographic high rainfall areas, vegetation histories from southern New Caledonia (Hope and Pask 1998;Stevenson et al 2001;Stevenson and Hope 2005) point to natural fire and the periodic expansion of disturbance scrubs (maquis) on several occasions before this, suggesting climate shifts towards greater seasonality and possibly lower rainfall. Latham (1986) infers from terrace building and the formation of soil calcretes that rainfall on the dry side of New Caledonia was 30% lower than present at 25,000 cal.…”

Archaeological research on Rapa Island, French Polynesia

“…As Rapa was once covered by temperate rainforest but at some point in the prehistoric past became almost completely denuded of forest, pollen analysis was the most suitable approach to that sequence. Pollen analysis of shifts in plant communities provides a basis for the detection of anthropogenic influence in deforestation and provides a proxy for the history of agricultural expansion (Hope 1996;Hope and Pask 1998).…”