Holocene floristic diversity and richness in northeast Norway revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) and pollen

We present a Holocene record of floristic diversity and environmental change for the central Varanger Peninsula, Finnmark, based on ancient DNA extracted from the sediments of a small lake (sedaDNA). The record covers the period c. 10 700 to 3300 cal. a BP and is complemented by pollen data. Measures of species richness, sample evenness and beta diversity were calculated based on sedaDNA sampling intervals and 1000‐year time windows. We identified 101 vascular plant and 17 bryophyte taxa, a high proportion (86%) of which are still growing within the region today. The high species richness (>60 taxa) observed in the Early Holocene, including representatives from all important plant functional groups, shows that modern shrub‐tundra communities, and much of their species complement, were in place as early as c. 10 700 cal. a BP. We infer that postglacial colonization of the area occurred prior to the full Holocene, during the Pleistocene‐Holocene transition, Younger Dryas stadial or earlier. Abundant DNA of the extra‐limital aquatic plant Callitriche hermaphroditica suggests it expanded its range northward between c. 10 200 and 9600 cal. a BP, when summers were warmer than present. High values of Pinus DNA occur throughout the record, but we cannot say with certainty if they represent prior local presence; however, pollen influx values >500 grains cm^?2 a^?1 between c. 8000 and 7300 cal. a BP strongly suggest the presence of pine woodland during this period. As the site lies beyond the modern tree limit of pine, it is likely that this expansion also reflects a response to warmer Early Holocene summers.     

Toward Optimal Calibration of the SLEUTH Land Use Change Model

SLEUTH is a computational simulation model that uses adaptive cellular automata to simulate the way cities grow and change their surrounding land uses. It has long been known that models are of most value when calibrated, and that using back‐casting (testing against known prior data) is an effective calibration method. SLEUTH's calibration uses the brute force method: every possible combination and permutation of its control parameters is tried, and the outcomes tested for their success at replicating prior data. Of the SLEUTH calibration approaches tried so far, there have been several suggested rules to follow during the brute force procedure to deal with problems of tractability, most of which leave out many of the possible parameter combinations. In this research, we instead attempt to create the complete set of possible outcomes with the goal of examining them to select the optimum from among the millions of possibilities. The self‐organizing map (SOM) was used as a data reduction method to pursue the isolation of the best parameter sets, and to indicate which of the existing 13 calibration metrics used in SLEUTH are necessary to arrive at the optimum. As a result, a new metric is proposed that will be of value in future SLEUTH applications. The new measure combines seven of the current measures, eight if land use is modeled, and is recommended as a way to make SLEUTH applications more directly comparable, and to give superior modeling and forecasting results.     

Stratigraphy,paleontology, and age of Lake Algonquin sediments in southwestern Ontario,Canada

Molluscs, ostracodes, diatoms, pollen, plant macrofossils, peat, and wood have been found in glacial Lake Algonquin sediments, and estuarine-alluvial sediments of the same age, in southern Ontario. Molluscs and ostracodes are particularly abundant and widespread. Pollen analysis of Lake Algonquin sediments, bogs on the Algonquin terrace, and upland bogs above the Algonquin terrace, indicate that Lake Algonquin was still in existence at the time of the spruce-pine pollen transition, previously dated at an average of 10,600 yr BP at a number of sites in Michigan, Ohio, and southern Ontario. Wood in estuarine-alluvial sediments graded to the Algonquin level is of similar radiocarbon age. Evidence from several sites in the eastern Great Lakes area suggests the presence of a preceding low-water stage (Kirkfield outlet stage); drowned and alluviated valleys and fining-upward sediment sequences have been identified in this study as further supporting evidence. Lake Algonquin drained from the southern sites by isostatic tilting and eventual opening of the “North Bay outlet” some time shortly after 10,400 yr BP.Our radiocarbon dates suggest the low-water stage has an age of about 11,000 yr BP, and that Lake Algonquin drained 10,000–15,000 y. a. Dates previously published for the Lake Michigan basin are generally too young in comparison with ours, and dates on the Champlain Sea are generally too old. More critical evaluation of all dating results is desirable.From fossil remains we suggest a rapidly expanding fauna in the waters of Lake Algonquin. The spruce pollen period was a time of rapid faunal and floral migration, when the ice front was retreating from Kirkfield to North Bay, Ontario. Diversity of some species and fossil numbers increased substantially at the transition from spruce to pine just before Lake Algonquin drained.     

Multiproxy evidence for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem responses during the 8.2 ka cold event as recorded at Højby Sø, Denmark

A sediment succession from Højby Sø, a lake in eastern Denmark, covering the time period 9400–7400 cal yr BP was studied using high-resolution geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, pollen, macrofossil, diatom, and algal pigment analysis to investigate responses of the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to the 8.2 ka cold event. A reduced pollen production by thermophilous deciduous tree taxa in the period c. 8250–8000 cal yr BP reveal that the forest ecosystem was affected by low temperatures during the summer and winter/early-spring seasons. This finding is consistent with the timing of the 8.2 ka cold event as registered in the Greenland ice cores. At Højby Sø, the climate anomaly appears to have started 200–250 yr earlier than the 8.2 ka cold event as the lake proxy data provide strong evidence for a precipitation-induced distinct increase in catchment soil erosion beginning around 8500 cal yr BP. Alteration of the terrestrial environment then resulted in a major aquatic ecosystem change with nutrient enrichment of the lake and enhanced productivity, which lasted until c. 7900 cal yr BP.     

Accretion-driven core collapse and the collisional formation of massive stars

We consider the conditions required for a cluster core to shrink, by adiabatic accretion of gas from the surrounding cluster, to densities such that stellar collisions are a likely outcome. We show that the maximum densities attained, and hence the viability of collisions, depend on the balance between core shrinkage (driven by accretion) and core puffing up (driven by relaxation effects). The expected number of collisions scales as     , where N _core is the number of stars in the cluster core and     is the free-fall velocity of the parent cluster (gas reservoir). Thus, whereas collisions are very unlikely in a relatively low-mass, low-internal-velocity system such as the Orion Nebula Cluster, they become considerably more important at the mass and velocity scales characteristic of globular clusters. Thus, stellar collisions in response to accretion-induced core shrinkage remain a viable prospect in more massive clusters, and may contribute to the production of intermediate-mass black holes in these systems.     

A comparison of GPS, VLBI and model estimates of ocean tide loading displacements

In recent years, ocean tide loading displacements (OTLD) have been measured using the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). This study assesses the accuracy of GPS measurements of OTLD by comparison with VLBI measurements and estimates derived from numerical ocean tide models. A daily precise point positioning (PPP) analysis was carried out on ∼11 years of GPS data for each of 25 sites that have previous OTLD estimates based on data from co-located VLBI sites. Ambiguities were fixed to integer values where possible. The resulting daily estimates of OTLD, at eight principal diurnal and semi-diurnal tidal frequencies, were combined to give GPS measurements of OTLD at each site. The 3D GPS and VLBI measurements of OTLD were compared with estimates computed (by convolution with Green’s functions) from five modern ocean tide models (CSR4.0, FES2004, GOT00.2, NAO99b and TPXO6.2). The GPS/model agreement is shown to be similar to the VLBI/model agreement. In the important radial direction, the GPS/model misfit is shown to be smaller than the VLBI/model misfit for seven of the eight tidal constituents; the exception being the K2 constituent. Fixing of GPS carrier-phase ambiguities to integer values resulted in a marginal improvement to the GPS/model agreement. Statistically, it is shown there is no significance to the difference between the fit of the GPS and VLBI measurements of OTLD to modelled values. Equally, differences in fit of either the complete set of GPS or VLBI estimates to the five sets of model-derived values cannot be identified with statistical significance. It is thus concluded that, overall, we cannot distinguish between GPS and VLBI measurements of OTLD, and that at the global scale, present ocean tide models are accurate to within the current measurement noise of these techniques.