Abstract
The Romanian Carpathians are located at the confluence of three major atmospheric pressure fields: the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Siberian. Despite its importance for understanding past human impact and climate change, high-resolution palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of Holocene hydroclimate variability, and in particular records of extreme precipitation events in the area, are rare. Here we present a 7500-year-long high-resolution record of past climatic change and human impact recorded in a peatbog from the Southern Carpathians, integrating palynological, geochemical and sedimentological proxies. Natural climate fluctuations appear to be dominant until 4500 years before present (yr BP), followed by increasing importance of human impact. Sedimentological and geochemical analyses document regular minerogenic deposition within the bog, linked to periods of high precipitation. Such minerogenic depositional events began 4000 yr BP, with increased depositional rates during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), the Little Ice Age (LIA) and during periods of societal upheaval (e.g. the Roman conquest of Dacia). The timing of minerogenic events appears to indicate a teleconnection between major shifts in North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and hydroclimate variability in southeastern Europe, with increased minerogenic deposition correlating to low NAO index values. By linking the minerogenic deposition to precipitation variability, we state that this link persists throughout the mid-to-late Holocene.
Highlights
The Carpathian Mountains and bordering lowlands are one of the most rapidly reacting regions of Europe to current climatic change, with droughts, and periods of short, intense precipitation becoming more common (IPCC, 2014; Micu et al, 2015)
The age model (Fig. 2) indicates the time frame covered by this study is from roughly 7500 years before present (yr BP) to the present day, with the uppermost peat dating from 2014
We find that: 1. Both natural climatic fluctuations and human impacts are clear in the vegetation record of the site
Summary
The Carpathian Mountains and bordering lowlands are one of the most rapidly reacting regions of Europe to current climatic change, with droughts, and periods of short, intense precipitation becoming more common (IPCC, 2014; Micu et al, 2015). The wider region (the Carpathian-Balkan) is located at the confluence of major atmospheric circulation patterns, with the North Atlantic system towards the west, the Mediterranean to the southwest, and the Siberian High to the east (Obreht et al, 2016 and references therein; Panagiotopoulos et al, 2005). The earliest known examples of extractive metallurgy (around 7000 yr BP) may be found throughout the region (Radivojevic et al, 2010 and references therein); evidence for a long history of significant human impact
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