Long-term changes in alpine pedogenetic processes: Effect of millennial agro-pastoralism activities (French-Italian Alps)

Bajard, Manon; Poulenard, Jérôme; Sabatier, Pierre; Étienne, David; Ficetola, Gentile Francesco; Chen, Wentao; Gielly, Ludovic; Taberlet, Pierre; Develle, Anne‐Lise; Rey, Pierre-Jérôme; Moulin, Bernard; Beaulieu, Jacques‐Louis de; Arnaud, Fabien

doi:10.1016/j.geoderma.2017.07.005

Cited by 46 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…The SCTF serves as a proxy of the erosion in the watershed. SCTF could be dominated by both long-term weak-to-medium intensity regional precipitation trends and changes in the vegetal cover, land use and multiple other factors linked to human activity (Bajard et al, 2017a(Bajard et al, , 2017b. Between 4.2 and 3.8 kyr cal BP, the anthropogenic indicator index of Lake Ledro, which is the closest anthropogenic record in the region, shows no human impact .…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene-long record of flood frequency in the Southern Alps (Lake Iseo, Italy) under human and climate forcing

Rapuc

Sabatier

Arnaud

et al. 2019

Global and Planetary Change

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Develle, et al.. Holocene-long record of flood frequency in the Southern Alps (Lake Iseo, Italy) under human and climate forcing. Global and Planetary Change, Elsevier, 2019, pp.Abstract A high-resolution sedimentological and geochemical analysis of a 21 m sediment sequence of Lake Iseo (Southern Alps, Italy) allowed for the reconstruction of the long-term flood frequency by visual identification of the event layers over the last 12 kyr cal BP. In a previous study that was undertaken on another sediment core from Lake Iseo, these layers were attributed to extreme surface runoff events. However, in this former core, large mass-wasting deposits that induce significant hiatuses did not permit a continuous record of flood events to be established. Such disturbances were absent in the core studied in the present paper. This permitted to establish a high-resolution continuous Holocene record. Based on the flood chronicle and sedimentological and XRF geochemical analyses, ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P Twe found evidence of a major palaeohydrological transition at approximately 3.8 kyr cal BP, which was previously described as occurring in the western Mediterranean region. The oldest part of the record indeed presents a very low frequency of flood events (< 1 flood/century), while after 4 kyr cal BP, the flood frequency increased. This pattern appears to be in agreement with other Southern Alpine paleo flood records. The transition is interpreted as a nonlinear climate response to the orbital-driven gradual decrease in summer insolation at 60°N, which together with the influence of the Mediterranean mesoscale precipitation events, is typical for the Mediterranean climate. However, the comparison of the flood record with the archaeological and historical data from the watershed suggests that human activity during the Roman period in the vicinity of the main tributaries also influenced the flood frequency. Even in a large Alpine lake and more than 2000 years ago, extreme precipitation events that were recorded through the sedimentation process can hence be impacted by the anthropization of the catchment area pointing the requirement of deeper studies of Earth surface critical zone pluri-millennial dynamics.

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Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene-long record of flood frequency in the Southern Alps (Lake Iseo, Italy) under human and climate forcing

Rapuc

Sabatier

Arnaud

et al. 2019

Global and Planetary Change

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“…This pattern is met in numerous partial multi-proxy studies of the Alps (e.g. Giguet-Covex et al, 2011;Bajard et al, 2017;Pini et al, 2017). Thus, an appropriate way of tracking climate oscillations is first to identify which geosystem compartments or proxies co-vary, in order to then proceed by elimination.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiproxy analyses of Lake Allos reveal synchronicity and divergence in geosystem dynamics during the Lateglacial/Holocene in the Alps

Cartier

Brisset

Guiter

et al. 2018

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of ecosystem responses to external forcing are generally limited by the difficulty of understanding the geosystem as a whole, because of the complex interactions between ecological compartments. Therefore, identifying which geosystem compartments or proxies co-vary is a prerequisite in unravelling the propagation of disturbances (e.g. climatic or anthropogenic) from one compartment to another. A multiproxy study of a continuous 13,500-year sedimentary profile cored in Lake Allos (European Alps, 2200 m a.s.l) was carried out on the basis of high-resolution sedimentological, geochemical, and botanical analyses, as well as determination of aquatic biotic proxies (diatoms, ostracods). These multiproxy datasets are rare at these high altitudes. Major changes occurred in the course of the palaeoenvironmental history of this alpine watershed at 12,000, 8600, 7200 and 3000 cal. BP. During the Holocene, two main transitions were recorded in all the ecological compartments (8600 and 3000 cal. BP), but the period 4500-3000 cal. BP stands out because of major changes that concerned only the lacustrine ecosystem. The frequent switches in lake level might correspond to the 4.2 ka climatic event. Proximity of this alpine lake to climatically-sensitive thresholds (ice-cover, thermal stratification, hydrological balance) may have amplified climatic signals in the lake ecosystem. This study illustrates the difficulties inherent to the use of common intra-Holocene stratigraphical limits, given that ecological compartments are likely to have different responses to forcing factors depending on the characteristics of the watershed and its capacity to accommodate disturbances.

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“…In addition to trace elements and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), pharmaceutical products have been analysed more recently [19,20]. This brief and non-comprehensive review does not cover the many lake cores analysed in France [21]. At all French sites, the sediment archives reveal the evolution of micropollutant contamination for the period when their regulatory analyses in water were limited or insufficient (<1990s) and long before, over periods that may exceed 100 years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sedimentary Archives Reveal the Concealed History of Micropollutant Contamination in the Seine River Basin

Ayrault¹,

Meybeck²,

Mouchel³

et al. 2020

The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry

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Sedimentary archives provide long-term records of particulate-bound pollutants (e.g. trace metal elements, PAHs). We present the results obtained on a set of selected cores from alluvial deposits within the Seine River basin, integrating the entire area's land uses upstream of the core location, collected upstream and downstream of Paris megacity and in the estuary. Some of these cores go back to the 1910s. These records are complemented by in-depth studies of the related pollution emissions, their regulation and other environmental regulations, thereby establishing contaminant trajectories. They are representative of a wide range of contamination intensities resulting from industrial, urban and agricultural activities and their temporal evolution over a 75,000 km 2 territory. A wide set of contaminants, including metals, radionuclides, pharmaceuticals and up to 50 persistent organic pollutants, have been analysed based on the Seine River sediment archives. Altogether, more than 70 particulate contaminants, most of them regulated or banned (OSPAR convention, European Water Framework Directive (WFD 2000/60/EC)), were measured in dated cores collected at 7 sites, resulting in a large data set. After drawing a picture of the literature devoted to sedimentary archives, the findings resulting from several decades of research devoted to the Seine River basin will be used, together with other studies on other French and foreign rivers, to illustrate the outstanding potential of sedimentary archives. The limitations of using sedimentary archives for inter-site comparison and the approaches developed in the PIREN-Seine to overcome such limitations such as selecting pertinent indicators (specific fluxes, per capita release, leakage rate, etc.) will be described. The very complex interactions between humans and their environment will be addressed through questions such as the impact on the spatial and temporal trajectories of contaminants of factors such as wastewater management, deindustrialisation within the Seine River basin, implementation of national and EU environmental regulations, etc. This chapter will show how such studies can reveal the persistence of the contamination and the emergence of new pollutants, e.g. antibiotics. It will propose indicators for the evaluation of the environment resilience and the efficiency of environmental policies.

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Long-term changes in alpine pedogenetic processes: Effect of millennial agro-pastoralism activities (French-Italian Alps)

Abstract: , et al.. Longterm changes in alpine pedogenetic processes: Effect of millennial agro-pastoralism activities (FrenchItalian Alps). Geoderma, Elsevier, 2017, 306, pp

Cited by 46 publications

References 59 publications

Holocene-long record of flood frequency in the Southern Alps (Lake Iseo, Italy) under human and climate forcing

Holocene-long record of flood frequency in the Southern Alps (Lake Iseo, Italy) under human and climate forcing

Multiproxy analyses of Lake Allos reveal synchronicity and divergence in geosystem dynamics during the Lateglacial/Holocene in the Alps

Sedimentary Archives Reveal the Concealed History of Micropollutant Contamination in the Seine River Basin

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