The vegetation, climate, and fire history of a mountain steppe: A Holocene reconstruction from the South Caucasus, Shenkani, Armenia

Impact of climate changes on vegetation and human societies during the Holocene in the South Caucasus (Vanevan, Armenia): A multiproxy approach including pollen, NPPs and brGDGTs

“…B) Topography of Armenia with the location of Vanevan peat and modern samples (mosses, soils and botanical records). Black and gray stars represent published and ongoing paleoecological studies, respectively: Lake Paravani (Messager et al, 2013;2073 m), Zarishat fen (Joannin et al, 2014;2116 m), Lake Shenkani (Cromartie et al, 2020;2193 m), Lake Kalavan (Joannin et al, in prep;1603 m), Shamb 2 (Ollivier et al, 2011). C) Southeastern shore of Lake Sevan with the location of Vanevan peat (VD2016 core, this study; VD2011 core, Leroyer et al, 2016) and archeological sites (Biscione et al, 2002;Parmegiani and Poscolieri, 2003;Hovsepyan, 2013Hovsepyan, , 2017.…”

“…The WAPLS and the MAT methods were applied with the R package Rioja (Juggins, 2020), the RF with the R package randomForest (Liaw and Wiener, 2002) and the BRT with the R package dismo (Hijmans et al, 2020). Cyperaceae and ferns of Vanevan record have been excluded because they indicate local dynamics in Armenia (Joannin et al, 2014;Cromartie et al, 2020).…”

“…Connor et al, 2018;Messager et al, 2013;. In Armenia however, the vegetation dynamic is more complex and suggests steppes dominance throughout the Holocene (Joannin et al, 2014;Leroyer et al, 2016;Cromartie et al, 2020). At Vanevan, on Lake Sevan's shores, Leroyer et al (2016) also revealed steppes expansion but, as their core only covers the Mid-Holocene (from 7800 to 5100 a cal BP), this vegetation dynamic cannot be extrapolated for the whole Holocene.…”

“…Human influence is generally detected in paleoecological records during the Early Bronze Age and becomes obvious during the last 3000 years (e.g. Wick et al, 2003;Cromartie et al, 2020). Moreover, wild cereals and other Poaceae produce pollen grains of Cerealia-type pollen, which may have biased the interpretation of anthropogenic pollen occurrence (Van Zeist et al, 1975).…”

“…Climate role on vegetation during the Holocene is not very well understood in the Caucasus region because of its complexity, mainly due to seasonality influence and climate mechanisms. Few climate reconstructions based on pollen data are available (Connor and Kvavadze, 2008;Joannin et al, 2014;Leroyer et al, 2016;Cromartie et al, 2020) and the climate of Armenia during the Holocene is poorly documented (Joannin et al, 2014;Cromartie et al, 2020). The abrupt climate changes are difficult to detect and until now the 4.2 ka event, a major climate event around the Mediterranean basin (e.g.…”