Holocene sequences in the humid tropical region of Kerala, South-western (SW) India have preserved abundance of organic-rich sediments in the form of peat and its rapid development in a narrow time frame towards Middle Holocene has been found to be significant. The sub-coastal areas and flood plains of the Greater Pamba Basin have provided palaeorecords of peat indicating that the deposits are ...

Oocysts attributable to E. macusaniensis Guerrero et al. 1971, were found in coprolites and in archaeological sediments dating to the Holocene of Patagonia, Argentina. By means of a non-parametric regression using a generalized additive model, a significant relationship was found between the size of the oocysts and their antiquity. Specifically, a reduction in oocyst size over time was discover...

Reproducing the tree cover changes throughout the Holocene is a challenge for land surface–atmosphere models. Here, results of a transient Holocene simulation of the coupled climate–carbon cycle model, CLIMBER2-LPJ, driven by changes in orbital forcing, are compared with pollen data and pollenbased reconstructions for several regions of Eurasia in terms of changes in tree fraction. The decline ...

A 137 cm sediment core from Fog Lake, a small upland basin that was not glaciated during the Late Wisconsinan, reveals the following stratigraphic succession: (I) basal diamicton, (II) laminated silts, (III) compacted dewatered gyttja, (IV) stratified minerogenic sediments, and (V) overlying gyttja. Units I—III, and most of unit IV, were deposited prior to the Holocene; unit V represents approx...

The recently developed Bayesian multinomial calibration model, Bummer, was applied to the fossil chironomid assemblages of a lake situated at the present tree-line in northern Fennoscandia to reconstruct patterns in Holocene climates. The results are compared with inferences derived using non-Bayesian weighted averaging partial least-squares regression. The reconstruction exhibits both long-ter...

It is widely believed that Australian Aborigines utilized fire to manage many landscapes; however, to what extent this use of fire impacted on Australia’s ecosystems remains uncertain. The late Pleistocene/ Holocene fire history from three sites within the Sydney Basin (Gooches Swamp, Lake Baraba and Kings Waterhole) were compared with archaeological and palaeoclimatic data. The Gooches Swamp r...

Archaeological, geological, historical, tree-ring and instrumental data indicate that the last 10 000 years were characterized in China by climatic variations at various temporal and spatial scales. The period from 10 000 to 9000 BP was one of increasing temperature. The Holocene ’Optimal Period’ occurred approximately between 9000 and 3000 BP, within which there were two major cool episodes ar...

The inherent sampling and preservational biases of the archaeological record make it difficult to quantify prehistoric human diets, especially in coastal settings, where populations had access to a wide range of marine and terrestrial food sources. In certain cases, geochemical proxies such as stable isotope ratios may be utilized to provide robust estimates on the relative proportions of vario...

[1] Mg/Ca analyses of G. bulloides and abundances of N. pachyderma (left coiling) from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 175 Hole 1084B in the Benguela coastal upwelling system document lower sea surface temperatures during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), Younger Dryas, mid-Holocene, and Little Ice Age in the southeastern Atlantic. Taking into consideration the possible effects of differential c...

Microbially mediated arsenic release from Holocene and Pleistocene Cambodian aquifer sediments was investigated using microcosm experiments and substrate amendments. In the Holocene sediment, the metabolically active bacteria, including arsenate-respiring bacteria, were determined by DNA stable-isotope probing. After incubation with (13) C-acetate and (13) C-lactate, active bacterial community ...