A long pollen record from lowland Amazonia: Forest and cooling in glacial times

Science

Volumn 274, Issue 5284, 1996, Pages 85-88

  Colinvaux, P A ^a   De Oliveira, P E ^b,d   Moreno, J E ^a   Miller, M C ^c   Bush, M B ^a,e  

^a SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE   (Panama)

^b FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO   (Brazil)

^e DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CLIMATE; ECOSYSTEM; FOREST; GRASS; MASS SPECTROMETRY; POLLEN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; TOMOGRAPHY;

COOLING; PALAEOCLIMATE; POLLEN ANALYSIS; POLLEN HISTORY; POLLEN RECORD; RAINFOREST;

SOUTH AMERICA, AMAZONIA;

EID: 0029659367     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.274.5284.85     Document Type: Article

References (45)

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12. J. A. Endler, Geographic Variation, Speciation, and Clines (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1977); J. Salo, Ann. Zool. Fenn. 24, 203 (1987); P. A. Colinvaux, Nature 278, 399 (1979); S. Beven, E. F. Connor, K. Beven, J. Biogeogr, 11, 383 (1984); J. D. Lynch, in Analytical Biogeograph, A. A. Myers and P. S. Giller, Eds. (Chapman & Hall, London, 1988), pp. 311-342; G. Irion, Trop. Ecol. 23, 76 (1982).
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14. M. B. Bush, J. Biogeogr. 21, 5 (1994).
15. P. A. Colinvaux, in Biological Relationships Between Africa and South America, P. Goldblatt, Ed (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT, 1993), pp. 473-499.
16. _, Quat, Sci. Rev. 6, 98 (1987).
17. A hypothesis that the Amazon forest was replaced by glacial "Lake Amazonas" is discounted by the attribution of the postulated lacustrine features to the Miocene [M. E. Räsänen, A. M. Linna, J. C. R. Santos, F. R. Negri, Science 269, 386 (1995)].
18. P. A. Colinvaux et al., Clim. Change 32, 19 (1996).
19. K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, Nature 318, 556 (1985); M. B. Bush et al., Quat. Res. 34, 330 (1990).
20. K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, Nature 318, 556 (1985); M. B. Bush et al., Quat. Res. 34, 330 (1990).
21. M. Stute et al., Science 269, 379 (1995); T. P. Guilderson, R. G. Fairbanks, J. L. Rubenstone, ibid. 263, 663 (1994); B. W. Leyden et al., Geophys. Monogr. Am. Geophys. Union 78, 165 (1993).
22. M. Stute et al., Science 269, 379 (1995); T. P. Guilderson, R. G. Fairbanks, J. L. Rubenstone, ibid. 263, 663 (1994); B. W. Leyden et al., Geophys. Monogr. Am. Geophys. Union 78, 165 (1993).
23. M. Stute et al., Science 269, 379 (1995); T. P. Guilderson, R. G. Fairbanks, J. L. Rubenstone, ibid. 263, 663 (1994); B. W. Leyden et al., Geophys. Monogr. Am. Geophys. Union 78, 165 (1993).
24. M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Veg. Sci. 1, 105 (1990); M. B. Bush et al., Ecol. Monogr. 62, 251 (1992).
25. M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Veg. Sci. 1, 105 (1990); M. B. Bush et al., Ecol. Monogr. 62, 251 (1992).
26. Paleoecological and paleoclimatological research in the Amazon based on the use of proxy data from lake sediments are in their infancy, with data from <20 lowland lakes being available for even the later Holocene (5, 22). Most studies have not as yet used multiproxy data, instead concentrating on exploring the possibilities of pollen analysis (17). A marsh core from Serra Carajas [M. L. Absy et al., C.R. Acad. Sci. 312, 673 (1991)] is from a savanna plateau between 700 and 900 m (7), and two lacustrine profiles of glacial age within the western Amazon rain forest cover only a few millennia (8). The sediments of Lake Pata are the first from an existing Amazonian rain forest lake found to span to glacial times. An attempt at a multiproxy examination by standardized methods at a grid of lake cores for the whole Amazon basin is being organized as a PAGES [the paleoclimate program of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP)] contribution to the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia, a collaboration between NASA and the Brazilian space agency INPE. This program will include core storage for public access to cores. The Lake Pata core has been returned to Brazil in accord with government regulations.
27. C. B. Gomes, E. Ruberti, L. Morbidelli, J. S. Am. Earth Sci. 3, 51 (1990); L. C. Justo and M. M. Souza, Jazida de Nióbio do Morro dos Seis Lagos, Amazonas, Capitulo XXXVII, Principals Depositos Minerais do Brasil, vol. 2 (Departamento Nacional da Produção Mineral, Rio de Janeiro, 1984). Deep rock drilling discovered carbonatite deposits below 225 m, but no calcareous deposits at shallower depths. Lake water is extremely soft: 2 to 5 μS; pH 4 to 4.5; no detectable dissolved sulfate: color, 50 ptn (platinum units); temperature, 28° to 30°C; oxygen and light close to zero at 3 m.
28. C. B. Gomes, E. Ruberti, L. Morbidelli, J. S. Am. Earth Sci. 3, 51 (1990); L. C. Justo and M. M. Souza, Jazida de Nióbio do Morro dos Seis Lagos, Amazonas, Capitulo XXXVII, Principals Depositos Minerais do Brasil, vol. 2 (Departamento Nacional da Produção Mineral, Rio de Janeiro, 1984). Deep rock drilling discovered carbonatite deposits below 225 m, but no calcareous deposits at shallower depths. Lake water is extremely soft: 2 to 5 μS; pH 4 to 4.5; no detectable dissolved sulfate: color, 50 ptn (platinum units); temperature, 28° to 30°C; oxygen and light close to zero at 3 m.
29. The regional climate is Köppen Af, equatorial, hot, and without a pronounced dry season. The average annual precipitation is 2914 mm (São Gabriel da Cachoeira) to 3652 mm (Missao Taraqua). The average annual temperature is 25°C (high, 30°C; low, 21°C) [Radambrasil 11, Rio de Janeiro (1976)]. Vegetation below an elevation of 600 m is described by the vegetation map of Brazil, Dir. Geociencias, Rio de Janiero, and the Radambrasil maps of the Amazon as DTRF. Our own travels confirm that DTRF occupies the lowlands with an elevation of ∼ 100 m surrounding the low inselberg. On parts of the Hill of the Six Lakes, exposed rocks and shallow soils provide edaphic constraints, suggesting that the facies of DTRF on the inselberg itself should be sensitive to changes in precipitation.
30. Comparable rates of sedimentation were measured in the two other lakes on the inselberg that we cored, Lake Dragão and Lake Verde.
31. The core was raised in meter sections from a raft of rubber boats with a piston sampler operated by push rods inside casing. Our practice is to taks parallel cores from a single station, the second being depth offset by ∼ 0.5 m, thus ensuring that any sediment lost from the bottom of a core tube during recovery is represented in the parallel core. Because of this precaution, we were able accurately to reconstruct the top 2 m of the Lake Pata sedimentary sequence even though 23 cm (including the unit B-unit C transition) were lost from the bottom of the first section of core. This lost section is present in the parallel core, where the whole of unit B, with both the unit A-unit B and the unit B-unit C transitions, is present in a single 1-m core barrel. Seven AMS dates on that single section range from 37,000 to 14,000 years; the depth-age plot being linear indicates almost constant sedimentation over this long interval (Table 1). The parallel sections (which were taken about 1 m apart) were aligned by the distinctive unit A-unit B boundary, and the alignment was checked by independent radiocarbon dating of both (for example, the AMS date of 18,020 years B.P. at 73.5 cm in the parallel section compared with a β-decay date of 17,840 years at 72 to 77 cm in the first section, Table 1).
32. J. D. Imbrie et al., in Milankovitch and Climate, A. L. Berger et al., Eds. (Reidel, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1984), pp. 269-305.
33. -1) measured in our airborne-pollen traps from Ecuadorian Amazonia, from near Manaus, and from the coastal rain forest of eastern Brazil [M. B. Bush, J. Veg. Sci. 3, 275 (1992)], The Amazon pollen assemblies are extremely diverse by temperate standards (we recognized 169 taxa in the Lake Pata analyses, based on our reference collection of >5000 neotropical species in >1500 genera. This high influx of diverse pollen taxa certainly holds a remarkably detailed history of Amazonian forest associations, the full potential of which will be realized only when more autecological information is available.
34. Forest signatures are also inherent in the percentages of the more copious pollen-producing families in the forest such as Moraceae, Urticaceae, Melastomataceae, and Myrtaceae. If these percentages, together with the percentages of wind-blown pollen of grasses, are used, it is possible statistically to separate the principal plant associations of the lowland neotropics, providing an independent identification of DTRF in the Lake Pata pollen spectra [M. B. Bush, Holocene 1, 162 (1991)].
35. Pollen counts at coarse intervals reveal similar forest spectra throughout the bottom 5 m of the section also, suggesting that DTRF was the local vegetation throughout the complete glacial cycle.
36. Podocarpus pollen has never been recorded in more than trace amounts in surface samples or Holocene sections from lowland forests of the Neotropics (22). The few grains of Podocarpus in surface and Holocene records can best be explained as the result of wind transport over long distances from Podocarpus stands at high elevations in the Andes and elsewhere or from rare Podocarpus trees in gallery forests [M. L. Salgado-Labouriau, Proceedings of the International Conference on Aerobiology, Berlin (1978), p. 89. Our 3 years of pollen trap data (100 traps) in Ecuadorian Amazonia include almost no Podocarpus. Traps in a 1-ha plot of coastal rain forest of southeastern Brazil (1 year of data, H. Behling, unpublished data) yielded only 0.8% Podocarpus despite the fact that three Podocarpus trees grow within the plot. Thus, Podocarpus populations much denser than those now found in Neotropical lowlands would be required to account for high Podocarpus pollen percentages. All reports of significant Podocarpus populations in northwestern Brazil are from Pico da Neblina, a mountain rising to 3014 m, 90 km northeast of the Hill of the Six Lakes. Principal herbarium holdings from the region are at the Field Museum and the New York Botanic Garden, both of which we searched for Podocarpus, finding minimum recorded elevations as follows: P. bucholzii, 2100 m; P. magnifolius, 1725 m; P. roraimae, 1200 m; P. steyermarkii, 1200 m; and P. tepuiensis, 1100 m. If the Lake Pata Podocarpus pollen represents descents of these populations, minimal descents were 800 m to the summit of the Hill of the Six Lakes and 1000 m to the surrounding lowlands.
37. M. B. Ribeiro, thesis, University of Brasilia (1994).
38. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
39. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
40. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
41. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
42. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
43. M. L. Absy, thesis, University of Amsterdam (1979); K-b. Liu and P. A. Colinvaux, J. Biogeogr. 15, 231 (1988); M. B. Bush and P. A. Colinvaux, Vegetatio 76, 141 (1988); P. A. Colinvaux et al., Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 55, 73 (1988); I. Frost, Ecology 69, 66 (1988); R. A. Grabandt, Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 29, 65 (1980).
44. E. C. Grimm, Comput. Geosci. 13, 13 (1987).
45. We thank the Brazilian Council of Scientific and Technological Development for permission to work in the Amazon in collaboration with Universidade Federal do Amazonas (15 August 1990). This work was funded by National Science Foundation grant BSR-9007019, the National Geographic Society, and the Mellon Foundation.