Holocene dynamics of vegetation change in southern and southeastern Brazil is consistent with climate forcing

Abstract

At mid to high northern latitudes postglacial vegetation change has often occurred synchronously over large regions triggered mainly by abrupt climate change. Based on 19 pollen diagrams from southern and southeastern Brazil we explore if similar synchronicities in vegetation change were also characteristic for the vegetation dynamics in low latitudes. We used sequence splitting to detect past vegetation change in the pollen diagrams and computed principal curves and rates of change to visually evaluate the changes in composition and dynamics. The results show that vegetation change occurred mostly during the second half of the Holocene with distinct episodes of change. The character of vegetation change is generally consistent with shifts to wetter conditions and agrees with inferred shifts of the South American Monsoon. Speleothems as well as the titanium record from the Cariaco Basin indicate several episodes of rapid shifts in the precipitation regime, which are within the dating uncertainty of the here detected periods of vegetation change (8900, 5900, 2800, 1200 and 550 cal yrs BP). Our results indicate that low latitude vegetation composition follows precession forcing of the hydrology, while change is often triggered and synchronized by rapid climate change much like in high and mid latitudes. Pollen diagrams document changes in the abundance of individual taxa and changes in the amount of woodland cover, while small compositional changes indicate a regional stability of vegetation types during the Holocene.