n-Alkane distribution and carbon stable isotope composition in leaf waxes of C3 and C4 plants from Angola |
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| Institution: | 1. Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany;2. Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde (IOW), Germany;1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India;2. Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, 53 University Road, Lucknow 226007, India;3. Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA;4. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 741252, India;5. Geological Institute, Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland;1. Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA;2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA;3. Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA;1. Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA;2. Sprigg Geobiology Centre, Environment Institute and the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia;1. Max-Planck-Institut für Biogeochemie, Jena, Germany;2. DFG-Leibniz Center for Surface Process and Climate Studies, Institut für Erd- und Umweltwissenschaften, Universität Potsdam, Germany;3. Faculté des Sciences, University of Maroua, Cameroon;4. National Herbarium of Cameroon, IRAD, Yaoundé, Cameroon;1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, 3651 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA;2. Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK;3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, AZ 85721, USA;4. Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, 260 Panama St, CA 94305, Stanford, USA;1. Key Laboratory of Western China''s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China;2. State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China;3. College of Resources and Environment, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050016, China |
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| Abstract: | Palaeoenvironmental assessment of past C3 and C4 vegetation distributions relies on end member data from plant analyses. In southwestern Africa, end member data of the carbon number distribution of n-alkanes from leaf waxes and their carbon isotopic composition were available for the rainforest and the savannah. To complement this, we analysed the n-alkane parameters of 41 C3 plants and 11 C4 plants from the transition region, i.e., the wood- and shrubland of Angola. The combined results for the rainforest, the wood- and shrubland and the savannah show an increase in the average chain length (ACL) of C3 and C4 plants and an increasingly enriched carbon stable isotope composition for the C3 plants from the equator towards southern Africa. The enlarged database was applied to the data of a north–south transect of deep-sea surface sediments already used in a previous study, which resulted in the proxies showing a good reflection of the vegetation on the adjacent southwest African continent in terms of %C4 plant cover. Applying end member values for ACL and δ13C obtained from the enlarged database by two different averaging methods (arithmetic average and median) to the n-alkane data from the sediment transect yielded similar vegetation reconstructions. In addition, a correlation between ACL and growth height of the plants is discussed, indicating that the ACL may be useful as a tree abundance parameter. Thus, the enlarged end member database strengthens the n-alkane parameters as tools for palaeoenvironmental studies. |
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| Keywords: | Leaf wax End member data Average chain length Carbon stable isotopes |
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