Phytolith-inferred transfer function for paleohydrological reconstruction of Dajiuhu peatland, central China

Abstract

Depth to water table (DWT, the depth from the water surface to the top of the peat surface) is one of the most important environmental variables related to the habitat types and distribution of vegetation within a subalpine peatland. The distribution of phytolith assemblages and basic environmental data from 43 surface soil samples with significant ecological and hydrological gradients were investigated to generate transfer functions for quantitative reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes in Dajiuhu peatland, central China. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA) were employed to explore the relationship between main environmental variables and phytolith morphotypes and distributions. Our results indicate that the spatial distribution of phytoliths was significantly correlated with the DWT (25% variance), total organic carbon (TOC, 10% variance) and magnetic susceptibility (χ, 7% variance). We established the transfer functions for the significant variables based on modern analogue technique (MAT), weighted averaging techniques (WA) and weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS), and model performance was assessed using bootstrap cross-validation. The high correspondence of the predicted DWT results based on phytolith-environment calibration data with observed data reflects that the phytolith-based WA-PLS is a reliable effective calibration method for the quantitative DWT reconstruction of ombrotrophic (rain-fed) subalpine peatland.

Phytoliths in Inflorescence Bracts: Preliminary Results of an Investigation on Common Panicoideae Plants in China

“…Phytoliths are plant-produced micro silica bodies which can, in some cases, have a diagnostic morphology that can be distinguished among taxa; in particular, phytoliths in the Poaceae family can have taxonomic value in archaeological contexts and natural sediments (Twiss et al, 1969;Wang and Lu, 1993;Piperno, 2006). Based on phytolith taxonomy and morphology, phytolith analysis has been proven to be a reliable tool in understanding the taxonomy and evolution of plants (Prychid et al, 2003;Rudall et al, 2014;Dinda and Mondal, 2018), paleoecology (Blinnikov et al, 2002;Stromberg, 2005;Gu et al, 2008;Stromberg et al, 2013;Dunn et al, 2015), and paleoclimate (Prebble and Shulmeister, 2002;Lu et al, 2007;Zuo et al, 2016;Liu H. et al, 2018); in recent years, it has been extensively employed in investigating the origin, development, and spread of agriculture (Lu et al, 2009a;Piperno et al, 2009;Madella et al, 2014;Ball et al, 2016a;Hilbert et al, 2017;Deng et al, 2018;He et al, 2018). However, compared to studies on the leaf phytoliths of Poaceae plants, inflorescence phytoliths have not been extensively studied and have generally focused on crop species and their relatives (Ball et al, 2016a).…”

Phytolith Production and Morphotypes in Modern Plants on the Tibetan Plateau

“…In contrast with pollen and charred seeds, the in situ deposition of phytoliths could provide more local information ( Rovner, 1971 ) and phytoliths are more durable in fire pits or environments where organic matter is hard to preserve ( Piperno, 2006 ). Previous studies implied that regional modern phytoliths references are crucial for the better interpretation of sedimental phytoliths assemblages ( Fredlund and Tieszen, 1997 ; Prebble et al, 2002 ; Lu and Liu, 2005 ; Lu et al, 2006 ; Liu et al, 2018 ). Thus, phytolith analysis could be a promising tool for reconstructing TP’s paleoenvironment and past agricultural activities.…”

Science Revealing Ancient Magic: Phytolith Evidence from the Early Chalcolithic Site of Isaiia (Eastern Romania)

“…Recently, the latter site has provided another discovery of a deposition in a vessel [ 3 ], which gave us the occasion to perform phytolith analysis on the sediment from the vessel. Having a fairly long history, the study of phytoliths (microscopic opal silica particles that are produced in and between plant cells during the plant’s life) has been growing significantly for the last three decades, becoming an essential tool for palaeovegetation and paleoenvironmental reconstruction [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] as well as being a valuable proxy for paleoecology [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] and for the paleoclimate [ 16 , 17 ].…”