Sedimentary stable carbon isotope evidence of late Quaternary vegetation and climate change in highland Costa Rica |
| |
Authors: | Chad S Lane Sally P Horn Claudia I Mora Kenneth H Orvis David B Finkelstein |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA;(2) Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA;(3) Present address: Department of Geography and Geology, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA;(4) Present address: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA;(5) Present address: Department of Geosciences, The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA |
| |
Abstract: | Continuous terrestrial records of paleoclimate and paleovegetation that extend to the late Pleistocene are rare for the circum-Caribbean
uplands. In this study we analyzed the bulk and compound-specific carbon isotope composition of lake sediments spanning this
period from Lago de las Morrenas 1 (LM1), a glacial lake in the highlands of southern Costa Rica, for evidence of climate
and vegetation changes that may not have been apparent in previous analyses. The stable carbon isotope ratios of n-alkanes typically derived from terrestrial plants (δ13CC27–C33) indicate an increased abundance of C4 plant taxa during the late Pleistocene and earliest Holocene that may be related to decreased atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations, increased aridity, or habitat availability. These n-alkane isotope ratios also provide evidence of more arid conditions during the early and late Holocene, and more mesic conditions
during the middle Holocene, a pattern prevalent in other paleoclimate records from the region that is thought to be related
to millennial-scale dynamics of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The sensitivity of the LM1 paleorecord to trade
wind dynamics provides further support for the role of millennial-scale shifts in ITCZ dynamics in driving neotropical environmental
change, and indicates that the effects of ITCZ migration were not limited to the lowlands. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|