Expanding known dinoflagellate distributions : investigations of slurry cultures from Caspian Sea sediment

To investigate the disparity between plankton and cyst records, sediment slurry cultures were used to isolate the motile stage of dinoflagellates from Caspian Sea sediment. This has resulted in new records for this area of Kryptoperidinium foliaceum, Gymnodinium aureolum and Woloszynskia sp. and for the cyst record, Scrippsiella acuminata. Two Gonyaulax species were isolated, one was identified as Gonyaulax baltica and the other an unknown species. Cultures of Lingulodinium polyedra were also isolated. The approach of using slurries was useful to provide cultures from sediments that were relatively poor in dinoflagellate cysts with contents

Human responses to environmental change on the southern coastal plain of the Caspian Sea during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods

This paper presents results of a multidisciplinary research initiative examining human responses to environmental change at the intersection of the southern coastal plain of the Caspian Sea and the foothills of the Alborz Mountains during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Our palaeo-environmental analysis of two sedimentary cores obtained from a lagoon in close proximity to four caves, occupied by human groups during the transition from hunting and gathering to food-producing ways of life in this region, confirms Charles McBurney's 1968 hypothesis that when Caspian Sea levels were high, Mesolithic hunters were reliant on seal and deer, but as water levels receded and a wide coastal plain emerged, hunters consumed a different range of herbivorous mammalian species. Palynological evidence obtained from these two cores also demonstrates that the cool and dry climatic conditions often associated with the Younger Dryas stadial do not appear to have been extreme in this region. Thus, increasingly sedentary hunting and gathering groups could have drawn on plant and animal resources from multiple ecological niches without suffering significant resource stress or reduced population levels that may have been encountered in neighbouring regions. Our analyses of botanical, faunal and archaeological remains from a recently-discovered open-air Mesolithic and aceramic Neolithic site also shows an early process of Neolithization in the southern Caspian basin, which was a very gradual, low-cost adaptation to new ways of life, with neither the abandonment of hunting and gathering, nor a climatic trigger event for the emergence of a low-level, food-producing society.This paper presents results of a multidisciplinary research initiative examining human responses to environmental change at the intersection of the southern coastal plain of the Caspian Sea and the foothills of the Alborz Mountains during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Our palaeo-environmental analysis of two sedimentary cores obtained from a lagoon in close proximity to four caves, occupied by human groups during the transition from hunting and gathering to food-producing ways of life in this region, confirms Charles McBurney's 1968 hypothesis that when Caspian Sea levels were high, Mesolithic hunters were reliant on seal and deer, but as water levels receded and a wide coastal plain emerged, hunters consumed a different range of herbivorous mammalian species. Palynological evidence obtained from these two cores also demonstrates that the cool and dry climatic conditions often associated with the Younger Dryas stadial do not appear to have been extreme in this region. Thus, increasingly sedentary hunting and gathering groups could have drawn on plant and animal resources from multiple ecological niches without suffering significant resource stress or reduced population levels that may have been encountered in neighbouring regions. Our analyses of botanical, faunal and archaeological remains from a recently-discovered open-air Mesolithic and aceramic Neolithic site also shows an early process of Neolithization in the southern Caspian basin, which was a very gradual, low-cost adaptation to new ways of life, with neither the abandonment of hunting and gathering, nor a climatic trigger event for the emergence of a low-level, food-producing society.status: publishe

Late Pleistocene and Holocene sea-level change and coastal paleoenvironment evolution along the Iranian Caspian shore

© The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).The level of the Caspian Sea is influenced by rivers mostly from the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere and therefore any change of its catchments including temperature and precipitation directly reflects on Caspian Sea-level. We reconstructed Late Pleistocene to Holocene Caspian Sea-level by a multi-disciplinary approach from a 27.7m long core in the SE corner of the Iranian Caspian coast in the Gomishan Lagoon. Late Pleistocene deposits containing typical Pleistocene fauna and dated around 20,120 cal yr BP bordered with a major hiatus indicating sea-level fall. Lagoonal deposits with shells dated at around 10,590 cal yr BP suggest that, after this deep lowstand, an initial transgression started, leading to landward advance of barrier–lagoon systems which still continued without any lowstand until 8400 cal yr BP. This corresponded to a biofacies change from lagoonal to the deeper biofacies including diatom and Gastropoda species. Around 8400 cal yr BP sea-level started to fall again, and reddish oxidized sediments with abundant foraminifera (Ammonia beccarii) record a regressive phase around 7700 cal yr BP. The mid-Holocene between 15.7 and 4.9 depths is characterized by a shallow marine environment mostly with high carbonate and gypsum contents, and lagoonal and highstand tract with no subaerial facies. The upper part of the core above a 4.9 m depth reflects at least five Late Holocene Caspian Sea-level cycles from 3260 cal yr BP onward. The Caspian Sea-levels are influenced both by global and regional events.The Oceanography Institute and Cultural Heritage Tourism Organization of Mazandaran

Late Little Ice Age palaeoenvironmental records from the Anzali and Amirkola Lagoons (south Caspian Sea): Vegetation and sea level changes

This is a postprint version of the article. The official published article can be found from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier Ltd.Two internationally important Ramsar lagoons on the south coast of the Caspian Sea (CS) have been studied by palynology on short sediment cores for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic investigations. The sites lie within a small area of very high precipitation in a region that is otherwise dry. Vegetation surveys and geomorphological investigations have been used to provide a background to a multidisciplinary interpretation of the two sequences covering the last four centuries. In the small lagoon of Amirkola, the dense alder forested wetland has been briefly disturbed by fire, followed by the expansion of rice paddies from AD1720 to 1800. On the contrary, the terrestrial vegetation reflecting the diversity of the Hyrcanian vegetation around the lagoon of Anzali remained fairly complacent over time. The dinocyst and non-pollen palynomorph assemblages, revealing changes that have occurred in water salinity and water levels, indicate a high stand during the late Little Ice Age (LIA), from AD < 1620 to 1800–1830. In Amirkola, the lagoon spit remained intact over time, whereas in Anzali it broke into barrier islands during the late LIA, which merged into a spit during the subsequent sea level drop. A high population density and infrastructure prevented renewed breaking up of the spit when sea level reached its maximum (AD1995). Similar to other sites in the region around the southern CS, these two lagoonal investigations indicate that the LIA had a higher sea level as a result of more rainfall in the drainage basin of the CS.The coring and the sedimentological analyses were funded by the Iranian National Institute for Oceanography in the framework of a research project entitled “Investigation of the Holocene sediment along the Iranian coast of Caspian Sea: central Guilan”. The radiocarbon date of core HCGL02 was funded by V. Andrieu (Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois, France) and that of core HCGA04 by Brunel University

Realising consilience: How better communication between archaeologists, historians and natural scientists can transform the study of past climate change in the Mediterranean

This paper reviews the methodological and practical issues relevant to the ways in which natural scientists, historians and archaeologists may collaborate in the study of past climatic changes in the Mediterranean basin. We begin by discussing the methodologies of these three disciplines in the context of the consilience debate, that is, attempts to unify different research methodologies that address similar problems. We demonstrate that there are a number of similarities in the fundamental methodology between history, archaeology, and the natural sciences that deal with the past ("palaeoenvironmental sciences"), due to their common interest in studying societal and environmental phenomena that no longer exist. The three research traditions, for instance, employ specific narrative structures as a means of communicating research results. We thus present and compare the narratives characteristic of each discipline; in order to engage in fruitful interdisciplinary exchange, we must first understand how each deals with the societal impacts of climatic change. In the second part of the paper, we focus our discussion on the four major practical issues that hinder communication between the three disciplines. These include terminological misunderstandings, problems relevant to project design, divergences in publication cultures, and differing views on the impact of research. Among other recommendations, we suggest that scholars from the three disciplines should aim to create a joint publication culture, which should also appeal to a wider public, both inside and outside of academia

Modern pollen rain–vegetation relationships along a forest–steppe transect in the Golestan National Park, NE Iran

Pollen rain-vegetation relationships were studied over a forest-steppe transect in Golestan National Park, NE Iran. The surface pollen percentages were compared to the vegetation composition of the respective vegetation types in 18 sampling points using both descriptive and numerical approaches. Hyrcanian lowland forests are characterized by pollen assemblages dominated by Quercus, Carpinus betulus and low frequencies of Zelkova carpinifolia. Both Parrotia persica and Zelkova carpinifolia show a very low pollen representation in modern surface samples, an under-representation that should be taken into account in the interpretation of past vegetation records. Transitional communities between the forest and steppe including Acer monspessulanum subsp. turcomanicum, Crataegus and Paliurus scrubs, Juniperus excelsa woodlands and shrub-steppe patches are more difficult to distinguish in pollen assemblages, however, they are characterized by higher values of the dominant shrub species. The transitional vegetation communities at the immediate vicinity of the forest show also a substantial amount of grass pollen. Many insect-pollinated taxa are strongly under-represented in the pollen rain including most of the rosaceous trees and shrubs, Rhamnus, Paliurus, Acer and Berberis. Artemisia steppes are characterized by very high values of Artemisia pollen and the near absence of tree pollen

Vegetation history and climatic fluctuations on a transect along the Dead Sea west shore and impact on past societies over the last 3500 years.

This study represents the vegetation history of the last 3500 years and conducts an analysis of the climatic fluctuations on a 75 km long transect on the western Dead Sea shore. Palynological and sedimentological data are available from six cores near Mount Sedom, Ein Boqueq, and Ein Gedi and from outcrops near Ze'elim and Ein Feshkha. The comparison of the pollen data with the lake levels shows synchronous trends. During the Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age and Hellenistic to Byzantine Period the high lake level of the Dead Sea signals an increase in precipitation. Contemporaneously, values of cultivated plants indicate an increase in agriculture. Lake level is low during the Late Bronze Age, within the Iron Age and at the end of the Byzantine period, indicating dry periods when all pds show a decrease of cultivated plants. Forest regeneration led by drought-resistant pines is observed in all pollen diagrams (pds) following the agricultural decline in the Byzantine period and, in the pds near Ein Boqeq, Ze'elim and Ein Feshkha, during the late Iron Age. The modern vegetation gradient is reflected in the palaeo-records: a stronger expansion of Mediterranean vegetation and cultivated plants in the northern sites is recognisable

Response to comment on: Palynology, palaeoclimate and chronology from the saalian glacial to Saint-Germain II interstadial from two long cores at the limit between the Mediterranean and Euxinian regions

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