Pliocene Arctic vegetation and its feedbacks with climate: combining Lake El´gygytgyn pollen data and vegetation modelling

Final Report Abstract

The investigations reported here have contributed significantly to the ICDP funded „El'gygytgyn Drilling Project“ in northeastern Siberia. They mainly comprised palynological analysis of the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene parts of the 318 m long lake sediment record that was recovered in spring 2009 above a suevite layer in the 3.6 Myr old El´gygytgyn impact crater, thus complementing respective investigations in the Middle and Late Pleistocene core part by collaborating palynologists in Russia and the USA. The scientific expectations of the project were to a large extent fulfilled, namely: (i) the first widely continuous Pliocene - Early Pleistocene pollen data set in the Arctic was obtained, (ii) the project contributed to the accomplishment of an extensive modern pollen data set in the Arctic as analogue for the past, (iii) an inverse vegetation modelling technique was set up and used to infer Pliocene/Early Pleistocene climate change from Arctic Siberia, (iv) changes in forest cover were quantified from El´gygytgyn pollen data, and (v) changes in species richness and vegetation turnover in response to glacial/interglacial vegetation change were depicted from the pollen data. The project thereby successfully intertwined modern and fossil pollen studies as well as proxy-based and modelling approaches. The results obtained contribute a palaeoclimatic perspective to controversially discussed questions concerning present-day and future Arctic warming and its feedbacks with vegetation.

Publications

• (2012): 2.8 million years of Arctic climate change from Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Russia. - Science, 337: 315-320
  Melles M., Brigham-Grette J., Minyuk P.S., Nowaczyk N.R., Wennrich V., DeConto R.M. Anderson P.M., Andreev A.A., Coletti A., Cook T.L., Haltia-Hovi E., Kukkonen M., Lozhkin A.V., Rosén P., Tarasov P., Vogel H. & Wagner B.
  
• (2013): A pollen-based biome reconstruction over the last 3.562 million years in the Far East Russian Arctic – new insights into climate-vegetation relationships at the regional scale. - Climate of the Past, 9: 2759-2775
  Tarasov P.E., Andreev A.A., Anderson P.M., Lozhkin A.V., Leipe C., Haltia E., Nowaczyk N.R., Wennrich V., Brigham-Grette J. & Melles M.
  
• (2013): Chronology of Lake El’gygytgyn sediments – a combined magnetostratigraphic, palaeoclimatic and orbital tuning study based on multi-parameter analyses. - Climate of the Past, 9: 2413–2432
  Nowaczyk N.R., Haltia E.M., Ulbricht D., Wennrich V., Sauerbreyn M.A., Rosén P., Vogel H., Francke A., Meyer-Jacob C., Andreev A.A. & Lozhkin A.V.
  
• (2013): Pliocene warmth, polar amplification, and stepped Pleistocene cooling recorded in NE Arctic Russia. - Science, 340: 1421-1427
  Brigham-Grette J., Melles M., Minyuk P., Andreev A., Tarasov P., DeConto R., Koenig S., Nowaczyk N., Wennrich V., Rosén P., Haltia E., Cook T., Gebhardt C., Meyer-Jacob C., Snyder J., Herzschuh U.
  
• (2014): Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene environments of the northeastern Russian Arctic inferred from the Lake El'gygytgyn pollen record. - Climate of the Past, 10: 1017-1039
  Andreev A.A., Tarasov P.E., Wennrich V., Raschke E., Herzschuh U., Nowaczyk N.R., Brigham- Grette J. & Melles M.
  
• (2015): The Réunion Subchron vegetation and climate history of the northeastern Russian Arctic inferred from the Lake El’gygytgyn pollen record. - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 436: 167-177
  Zhao W.W., Andreev A.A., Wennrich V., Tarasov P.E., Anderson P., Lozhkin A.V. & Melles M.
  
• (2016): Glacial legacies on interglacial vegetation at the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition in NE Asia. - Nature Communications, 7: 11967
  Herzschuh U., Birks H.J.B., Laepple T., Andreev A., Melles M. & Brigham-Grette J.
  
• (2016): Millennial-scale vegetation changes in the north-eastern Russian Arctic during the Pliocene/Pleistocene transition (2.7 - 2.5 Ma) inferred from the pollen record of Lake Elgygytgyn. - Quaternary Science Reviews, 147: 245-258
  Andreev A., Tarasov P.E., Wennrich V. & Melles M.
  
• (2016): Treeline dynamics in Siberia under changing climates as inferred from an individual-based model. - Ecological Modelling, 338: 101-121
  Kruse S., Wieczorek M., Jeltsch F. & Herzschuh U.