A late Quaternary marine palynological record (oxygen isotope stages 1 to 7) for the humid tropics of northeastern Australia based on ODP Site 820

The deep human prehistory of global tropical forests and its relevance for modern conservation

“…This may reflect reliance on starchy forest edge plants and bearded pig attracted to canopy openings 12 . In tropical Australia, the decline of Araucaria and rise of Eucalypts and Casuarina has been correlated with the advent of anthropogenic biomass burning after 40 ka [46][47][48] . Human landscape impacts have also been documented in the montane tropical forests of Highland New Guinea from 45-35 ka, even retarding vegetation re-colonization in the region following the Last Glacial Maximum 49 .…”

“…Still debated, but potentially even more significant in terms of long-term impact, is human involvement in Late Pleistocene tropical forest megafaunal extinctions, which are argued to have had anthropogenic, climatic or multivariate causes, and to have resulted in major changes to ecosystem structure 47 . While discussions of megafaunal extinctions in tropical forests have been relatively limited, these environments possessed diverse megafauna, which persist in parts of Africa and Asia 51 .…”

Palaeoecology as a means of auditing wetland condition

“…While Peter's supervisor patiently examined detailed records of change in fine temporal (and spatial) resolution (Walker et al 2000), and first coined the term 'fine-resolution pollen analysis', his student's focus was clearly on the ecological response of vegetation communities to Milankovich-scale climatic fluctuations. The pollen record from Lynch's Crater is progressively developed in an ever increasing number of publications (Kershaw 1978(Kershaw , 1986(Kershaw , 1993Turney et al 2006;Kershaw et al 2007) and this is complemented by long offshore records (Harle 1997;Moss and Kershaw 2007) and those from the western plains (Kershaw et al 1991;Kershaw, 1998;Harle et al 2004), and uplands (McKenzie and Kershaw 1997;Kershaw et al 2007) of Victoria. While Peter Kershaw's website observes that his research focus is on "Environmental Change … as a basis for understanding present landscapes and contributing to their future management", Peter has only occasionally ventured into the dark side of environmental management.…”

Surface ∂13C in Australia: A quantified measure of annual precipitation?

“…Ehleringer and Cooper 1988;Farquhar et al 1989;Turney et al 1999Turney et al , 2002. Unfortunately, few plant macrofossils (including wood) are found within terrestrial and marine sedimentary sequences across and adjacent to the mainland of Australia (D'Costa et al 1989;Bohte and Kershaw 1999;Moss and Kershaw 2007), precluding continuous ∂ 13 C measurements of material through profiles. One alternative is charcoal (e.g.…”

“…Firstly, charcoal is a common product from biomass burning and largely recalcitrant in lake (Kershaw 1971(Kershaw , 1974(Kershaw , 1975(Kershaw , 1976(Kershaw , 1995Kershaw et al 2004;Turney et al 2004), marine (Kershaw et al 1993;Wang et al 1999;van der Kaars et al 2000;Moss and Kershaw 2007) and soil (Hopkins et al 1993;Bird et al 1999;Lehman et al 2008) environments, allowing preservation on geological timescales (Lynch et al 2007;Power et al 2008). Secondly, if charcoal is finely disseminated with sediments, its ∂ 13 C composition should reflect the proportions of C3 and C4 plants within the local vegetation (primarily controlled by the most effective season of rainfall; Hattersley 1983;Polley et al 1993;Ehleringer et al 1997) and/or the degree of physiological stress on C3 plants as a result of changing moisture availability (Ehleringer and Cooper 1988;Turney et al 1999;Turney et al 2002).…”