Corroded Pollen and Spores as Indicators of Changing Lake Sediment Sources and Catchment Disturbance

Pollen and spores with resistant exines are preferentially preserved in soils, and during periods of soil erosion they can become incorporated into lake sediments. As a result, the contemporary vegetation may be poorly represented by the palynomorphs in the lake sediments because of the reworked component of inwashed pollen and spores. We record the proportion of palynomorphs with corroded exines in sediment cores from four lakes in the eastern North Island of New Zealand to document changing sources of palynomorphs over the last 2000 years. During this period, the catchments experienced major vegetation disturbances, both natural (from volcanism and fire) and anthropogenic including deforestation ca. 600 years ago, and the European conversion of fern-scrubland to pasture in the 19th century. Corroded palynomorphs are more abundant in inwashed sediments than authigenic sediments. Catchment soil disturbance was minor during the forested period, and characterised by small, inwashed, sediment pulses after storms, and a relatively low percentage of corroded palynomorphs. Although initial Maori forest clearance by fire led to a temporary increase in erosion in one lake catchment, rapid replacement of forest by a dense bracken fern cover helped to minimise soil erosion and reworking of palynomorphs in this period. European pastoralists replaced the bracken fern with shallow-rooted pasture grasses about 150 years ago. In erosion prone lake catchments, this led to a rapid increase of inwashed eroded soils and littoral sediments, and their component of resistant palynomorphs, reaching the lake sediments. As a result, the palynological records from these catchments during the European period are distorted by reworking. By contrast, over the same period, the palynological record from a lake with no inflowing streams and stable catchment soils more faithfully represented the contemporary vegetation cover. Exine corrosion has been used to help identify periods of reworking in the lake sediments and to allow for a correction of distortion caused by reworking.