Paleosols in low-order streams and valley heads in the Araucaria Plateau – Record of continental environmental conditions in southern Brazil at the end of MIS 3

Abstract

The Araucaria Plateau is a geomorphological unit that occupies approximately three-quarters of the terrain in the southern region of Brazil. The plateau displays different altitudinal levels (600 to <1400 m a.s.l.) that are locally recognized as remnants of planed surfaces (S8–S1). These surfaces are maintained by basic (S3–S8) and acidic (S1 and S2) volcanic flows from the Neocretaceous period of the Paraná Basin. The largest extent of this plateau is located in a humid subtropical climate zone. Colluvial, colluvial–alluvial, alluvial sediments and paleosols (Ab diagnostic horizons) occur predominantly in S2. The paleosols are located in low-hierarchical-order fossil valleys (first- to fourth-order in Strahler's stream classification) and valley heads, which are referred to as paleovalleys in this paper. We employed these paleosols as stratigraphic level markers of the pedogenesis of the regional Upper Quaternary and propose their importance as records of the paleoenvironmental conditions of the Araucaria Plateau in areas above 1200 m a.s.l. These paleosols were dated by 14C and show ages between 23.8 ± 0.05 kyr BP (28.06–29.08 kyr cal. BP) and 41.16 ± 0.48 kyr BP (44.13–45.58 kyr cal. BP). The calibrated ages are related to Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3), in which the last period of global warming occurred (approximately 60–25 kyr cal. BP). We integrated the morphological, pedogeochemical, clay fraction mineralogy, micromorphological and δC-13 analyses of five paleosols from S2 to verify the paleoenvironmental conditions of the Araucaria Plateau and its correspondence with the paleoclimatic phenomena that were identified on a global scale during MIS 3 in the Southern Hemisphere. We obtained the following conclusions: a) the properties of paleosols reflect pedological processes that are adjusted to the paleoenvironmental conditions at the end of MIS 3 and the transition to MIS 2 (Last Glacial Maximum); b) aplasmogenic partial acidolysis was the predominant pedogeochemical process during MIS 3; c) during this period, the water regime was sufficiently humid to develop hydromorphic horizons in the valley bottoms of the entire drainage network to the valley heads; d) regional change toward a drier hydric regime occurred in MIS 2, when erosion of the paleosols predominated; and e) in MIS 1 (current Holocene interglacial), burial of the paleosols and relief inversion occurred, which resulted in fossilization of the valleys.