Lignin oxidation products as a potential proxy for vegetation and environmental changes in speleothems and cave drip water – a first record from the Herbstlabyrinth, central Germany

Heidke, Inken; Hoffmann, Thorsten

doi:10.5194/cp-15-1025-2019

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Wang et al ., 2019a) and lignin phenols (e.g. Blyth and Watson, 2009; Heidke et al ., 2019). For example, in a Chinese speleothem, ratios of long‐chain n ‐alkanes and n ‐alkan‐2‐ones (from terrestrial vegetation) to shorter chain compounds (from soil organisms) recorded vegetation changes during the Last Glacial Maximum which could be linked to fluctuations in North Atlantic SSTs during the last deglaciation (Xie et al ., 2003).…”

Section: Reconstructing Vegetation and Hydrological Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Biomarker proxies for reconstructing Quaternary climate and environmental change

McClymont,

Mackay,

Stevenson

et al. 2023

J Quaternary Science

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To reconstruct past environmental changes, a range of indirect or proxy approaches can be applied to Quaternary archives. Here, we review the complementary and novel insights that have been provided by the analysis of chemical fossils (biomarkers). Biomarkers have a biological source that can be highly specific (e.g. produced by a small group of organisms) or more general. We show that biomarkers are able to quantify key climate variables (particularly water and air temperature) and can provide qualitative evidence for changes in hydrology, vegetation, human–environment interactions and biogeochemical cycling. In many settings, biomarker proxies provide the opportunity to simultaneously reconstruct multiple climate or environmental variables, alongside complementary and long‐established approaches to palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Multi‐proxy studies have provided rich sets of data to explore both the drivers and impacts of palaeoenvironmental change. As new biomarker proxies continue to be developed and refined, there is further potential to answer emerging questions for Quaternary science and environmental change.

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Section: Reconstructing Vegetation and Hydrological Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Biomarker proxies for reconstructing Quaternary climate and environmental change

McClymont,

Mackay,

Stevenson

et al. 2023

J Quaternary Science

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“…Powdered speleothem samples of 100 to 200 mg were collected from sectioned core samples and analyzed as described in Hellstrom (2003) and Drysdale et al (2012 Hellstrom (2006) and the decay constants of Cheng et al (2013), with initial 230 Th / 232 Th and its uncertainty for each speleothem estimated using a stratigraphic constraint. A table with all relevant data concerning the 230 Th / U dating as well as the age-depth models can be found in the Supplement.…”

Section: Th/u Dating Of Flowstone Coresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lignin oxidation products in soil, dripwater and speleothems from four different sites in New Zealand

et al. 2021

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Abstract. Lignin oxidation products (LOPs) are widely used as vegetation proxies in climate archives, such as sediment and peat cores. The total LOP concentration, Σ8, provides information on the abundance of vegetation, while the ratios C/V and S/V of the different LOP groups also provide information on the type of vegetation. Recently, LOP analysis has been successfully applied to speleothem archives. However, there are many open questions concerning the transport and microbial degradation of LOPs on their way from the soil into the cave system. These processes could potentially alter the original source-dependent LOP signals, in particular the C/V and S/V ratios, and thus complicate their interpretation in terms of past vegetation changes. We analyzed LOPs in leaf litter and different soil horizons as well as dripwater and flowstone samples from four different cave sites from different vegetation zones in New Zealand using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry. We test whether the original source-dependent LOP signal of the overlying vegetation is preserved and can be recovered from flowstone samples and investigate how the signal is altered by the transport from the soil to the cave. The LOP concentrations range from mg g−1 in the soil to ng g−1 in the flowstones. Our results demonstrate that, from the soil to the flowstone, the C/V and S/V ratios both increase, while the total lignin content, Σ8, strongly decreases. This shows that the LOP signal is strongly influenced by both transport and degradation processes. Nevertheless, the relative LOP signal from the overlying soil at the different cave sites is preserved in the flowstone. We emphasize that for the interpretation of C/V and S/V ratios in terms of past vegetation changes, it is important to compare only samples of the same type (e.g., speleothem, dripwater or soil) and to evaluate only relative variations.

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“…Most can be reliably dated using uranium series isotopes (Mason et al, 2022;Scholz and Hoffmann, 2008). Well-established inorganic proxies such as δ 18 O and δ 13 C are increasingly complemented by organic biomarkers that record more specific aspects of the paleoenvironmental conditions (Baker et al, 2019;Blyth et al, 2016;Bosle et al, 2014;Heidke et al, 2019;Homann et al, 2022). One important aspect of past environments is the occurrence and dynamics of fires, whether natural or anthropogenic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Past fire dynamics inferred from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and monosaccharide anhydrides in a stalagmite from the archaeological site of Mayapan, Mexico

Homann,

Karbach,

Carolin

et al. 2023

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Speleothems (cave stalagmites) contain inorganic and organic substances that can be used to infer past changes in local and regional paleoenvironmental conditions. Specific biomarkers can be employed to elucidate the history of past fires, caused by interactions among climate, regional hydrology, vegetation, humans, and fire activity. We conducted a simple solid–liquid extraction on pulverised carbonate samples to prepare them for analysis of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and three monosaccharide anhydrides (MAs). The preparation method requires only small samples (0.5–1.0 g); PAHs and MAs were measured by GC–MS and LC–HILIC–MS, respectively. Detection limits range from 0.05–2.1 ng for PAHs and 0.01–0.1 ng for MAs. We applied the method to 10 samples from a ∼ 400-year-old stalagmite from Cenote Ch'en Mul, at Mayapan (Mexico), the largest Postclassic Maya capital of the Yucatán Peninsula. We found a strong correlation (r = 0.75, p < 0.05) between the major MA (levoglucosan) and non-alkylated PAHs (Σ15). We investigated multiple diagnostic PAH and MA ratios and found that although not all were applicable as paleo-fire proxies, ratios that combine PAHs with MAs are promising tools for identifying different fire regimes and inferring the type of fuel burned. In the 1950s and 1960s, levoglucosan and Σ15 concentrations roughly doubled compared to other times in the last 400 years, suggesting greater fire activity at Mayapan during these two decades. The higher concentrations of fire markers may have been a consequence of land clearance at the site and exploration of the cave by Carnegie Institution archaeologists.

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Lignin oxidation products as a potential proxy for vegetation and environmental changes in speleothems and cave drip water – a first record from the Herbstlabyrinth, central Germany

Cited by 7 publications

References 51 publications

Biomarker proxies for reconstructing Quaternary climate and environmental change

Biomarker proxies for reconstructing Quaternary climate and environmental change

Lignin oxidation products in soil, dripwater and speleothems from four different sites in New Zealand

Past fire dynamics inferred from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and monosaccharide anhydrides in a stalagmite from the archaeological site of Mayapan, Mexico

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