NEWS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PALEOSCIENCE COMMUNITYA CORE PROJECT OF THE INTERNATIONAL GEOSPHERE-BIOSPHERE PROGRAMME IGBP

Vol.6, N°1August 1998

PAGES International Project Office, Bärenplatz 2, CH-3011 Bern, Switzerland - Tel: +41 31 312 31 33, Fax: +41 31 312 31 68, e-mail: pages@pages.unibe.ch, http://www.pages.unibe.ch/Executive Director: Frank Oldfield, Director: Bruno Messerli, Science Officer: Keith Alverson, Office Manager: Niklaus Schranz

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1 Loess 13 Science Reports

11 Open Science Meeting Report on Panel Discussion; Poster Winners12 Focus 3 A new Initiative on Past Human Impacts; LUCIFS14 Workshop reports DFG, Data, PEP1, ScanTran, Mountains, Historical Data19 PAGES and Biodiversity Global Climate Change and the South African Flora

20 Last Page Inside Pages; START Young Scientist Awards; Calendar

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Technical notesFor readability the figures forthe 13 loess reports havebeen numbered in sequence.Full references for the loesspapers can be obtained fromthe respective authors.

Eroded cliffs in the Chinese Loess Plateau. The natural exposures show paler and darker bands that reflect, respectively, alternationsbetween loess deposition (“glacials”) and paleosol development (“interglacials”)(Photo: B. Maher, University of East Anglia, UK).

EDITORIAL

Continuing our intention to focus on specific themeswithin each Newsletter, the present issue includes amajor section devoted to paleoenvironmental researchon the Chinese loess and paleosol sequences thatprovide one of the world’s most detailed and continuouscontinental records of past environmental change.This compilation serves an additional purpose, since itallows us to honor Professor Tungsheng Liu in his 80thyear. Among many other notable accomplishments,Professor Liu is the father of paleoenvironmental researchon Chinese loess. His interests focused on this theme inthe late 50’s after earlier research in paleontology. Asearly as 1954, he had founded the QuaternaryLaboratory in the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academyof Sciences. This was the first, and for a long time the onlyinstitution of its kind in China. By 1961 he was able topresent to the INQUA Congress an account of the longterm paleoclimatic record from key loess sections thatreinforced the recent marine evidence for many moreglacial and interglacial cycles than had previously beenbelieved. During the 70’s and 80’s, intensive studies on

the Luochuan type section led to fruitful internationalcollaboration and to the founding of the Xian Laboratoryof Loess and Quaternary Geology, of which ProfessorLiu was the first Director. His leadership within andinfluence on the development of Quaternary Science,Environmental Geology and Global Change Research inChina, and the international respect for his work, cannotbe overstated. PAGES has been fortunate to benefit fromhis wise input throughout its short history and it is anhonor for PAGES to have an opportunity to dedicate thiscompilation to him.The short reports we present confirm the unique value ofthe loess record. They also illustrate new approaches torefining climate proxies from key sections, as well as toimproving chronological control. The stimulus providedby Professor Liu’s pioneering work has evolved into adynamic field of research with just that beguiling mixtureof coherence and debate to keep us all on our toes.Finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of ZhentangGuo in compiling the reports presented here.

FRANK OLDFIELD

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The PAGES report 96-4 “Continen-tal Drilling for PaleoclimaticRecords” has been reprinted by theGeoforschungszentrum Potsdamand is again available in hardcopyfrom the PAGES IPO in Bern.The report is also available in htmlform on the PAGES website http://www.pages.unibe.ch/.

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Loess is a sediment difficult to date. Theloess sequences of the last climatic cycle inChina are usually dated by radiocarbon andthermoluminescence (TL) measurements.Correlation with marine δ18O records and or-bital cycles is also frequently used for the con-struction of time-scales. In previous studies,soil S0 was correlated with the deep-sea oxy-gen isotope stage 1; loess L1 was correlatedwith isotope stages 2, 3 and 4, the weak soilcomplex within L1 with stage 3, and the S1 soilwith stage 5.

Recently, the Weinan loess section was in-tensively dated for determining the ages of themajor stratigraphic boundaries using TL andtwenty-eight radiocarbon dates. The radiocar-bon dating was carried out on the humin frac-tion of the organic matter in the samples usingAMS. The results confirms the previous land-

Loess Dating Progress in Chinasea correlation pattern except for the lowerboundary of the soil complex in the Malanloess (Fig. 1): most of the TL dating yieldedages centered at ~50 ka, which is significantlyyounger than the age of stage 3 (~59 ka) ac-cording to Martinson et al (1987). The TL ageis, however, in good agreement with the oxy-gen isotope age of ~50 ka provided by the eo-lian dust record in the North Pacific (Hovan etal. 1989), which represents a direct link be-tween the Chinese loess and marine δ18Orecords. These dates provide an independenttimescale for the loess-paleosol sequence ofthe last climatic cycle.

JIAQI LIU AND TUNGSHENG LIUInstitute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,P.O. Box 9825, Beijing 100029, ChinaTIEMEI CHENDept. of Archeology, Beijing University, China

Fig. 1: Depth-Agetransformation of theWeinan loess sectionbased on absolute datingcompared with thatobtained by correlatingwith the SPECMAP timescale (figure from LiuJ.Q. et al., 1994).SPECMAP data are fromImbrie et al., 1984).1. AMS 14C age; 2. TLage; 3. stratigraphicboundary age obtainedthrough correlation withSPECMAP δ18O record;4. Loess; 5. Paleosol

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A new Proxy of the EastAsian Paleomonsoon

Magnetic susceptibility variations in Chi-nese loess-paleosol sequences are used bymany authors as a proxy for the strength ofEast-Asian summer monsoon. Susceptibilityvalues are higher in paleosols than in the over-lying and underlying loess. Recently, we car-ried out a paleopedological study on threeloess sections (Weinan, 34.33°N, 109.5°E;Changwu 35.2°N, 107.8 °E and Xifeng 35.7°N,107.6°E) for the last 900 ka using various ped-ological methods and found that the suscep-tibility value is not always consistent with thepedological indicators (Fig. 2). For example: (1)The S4, S5-1 and S5-3 soils represent the mostdeveloped soils while the susceptibility valuesfor S4 and S5-3 are not higher than for theother soil units (in the case of S5-3 they areeven lower). (2) For the three sub-units of S5,the intensity of pedogenesis shows an order ofS5-1 (strongest), S5-3 and S5-2 (weakest) whilethe susceptibility shows an order of S5-1 (high-est), S5-2 and S5-3 (lowest). (3) The soils S6, S7and S8 are similar to S2 and S3 while the sus-ceptibility values for the major soil units olderthan S5-1 are much lower than for the youngerinterglacial soils (S0 to S5-1), even lower thanfor some weakly developed interstadial soilsin the loess units L1, L2 and L3. These resultstherefore provide a complex picture for theclimatic significance of the magnetic suscepti-bility in paleosols. Understanding the basis ofthis complexity will require much additionalwork. The Loess Plateau is located in the East-Asian monsoon zone. Since the average soiltemperatures in the region are below 0°C fromlate autumn to early spring under moderninterglacial conditions, the chemical weather-ing of loess mainly depends upon summertemperatures and precipitation. Consequently,a chemical weathering index would be ex-pected to reflect the paleomonsoon intensity:high weathering intensity can be interpretedas an indication of strengthened summermonsoon and lower weathering intensity in-dicates the reverse. Recently, we have gener-ated a high-resolution paleo-weathering

Fig. 2: Variations in the Fed/Fet ratio from the Changwu loess section compared with the magneticsusceptibility values. The timesacle is obtained by correlating the susceptibility signals with that of Xifeng(see Kukla et al., 1990, Trans. Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences, 81:263-288)

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record (at 10 cm intervals) for the Changwuloess section using the ratio of free Fe2O3 (Fed)(extracted by dithionite-bicarbonate-citratemethod) to total Fe2O3 widely used by pedolo-gists for characterizing the soil weatheringintensity. The new proxy is highly consistentwith other indicators of the intensity of pedo-genesis: (1) the most developed S4, S5-1 andS5-3 have the highest Fed/Fet ratio; (2) for thethree sub-units of S5, the ratio is the highestfor S5-1 and lowest for S5-2, thus in closeagreement with the macro and micromorpho-logical observations; (3) the ratios for the soilunits S6, S7 and S8 are similar to those for S2and S3; and (4) the susceptibility time-seriesshows a major shift in amplitude at ~ 600 kaBP while that for the new proxy is at ~ 800 ka,similar to that defined according to thepaleosols. Therefore the Fed/Fet ratio seemsto be a better indicator of the strength of theEast Asian summer monsoon than do varia-tions in magnetic susceptibility.

We believe that the strong development ofthe S4, S5-1 and S5-3 soils is not solely a func-tion of a longer period of soil-formation, but ofclimate conditions. The data match well withthe higher δ13C values (marine oxygen isotopestages 11, 13 and 15) in the marine record (seeRaymon et al., 1990, Earth and Planetary ScienceLetters, 97:353-368; and Oppo et al., 1990,Palaeoceanography, 5:43-54). These periods alsocorrespond with the periods of greatest Atlan-tic-Pacific benthic δ13C gradients, suggesting alink with the rate of the deep-water formationin the North Atlantic.

ZHENGTANG GUO, TUNGSHENG LIU, LANYING WEI,NAIQIN WU, HUOYUAN LU AND WENYING JIANGInstitute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,P.O. Box 9825, Beijing 100029, China

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In reconstructions of Quaternary climate,most researchers have made quantitative esti-mates of paleoclimate from linear relationsbetween paleoclimatic proxy records andsingle climatic factors (e.g. temperature or pre-cipitation), and established non-linear equa-tions related to two climatic parameters suchas temperature and precipitation by using re-sponse surface analysis. In this study, we usea non-linear inversion method to synthesizethe data of three different proxy indicators andreconstruct paleoclimate. 63 records of Mag-netic susceptibility (MS), 12 of the total Fe2O3(Fet) and 28 of the mollusk species (Vallonia cf.pulchella) were taken from modern surfacesoils of the Loess Plateau and used as proxyindicators of physical, chemical and biologicalrecords. For stratigraphical study, we chosethe Luochuan loess section, a standard sectionfor Chinese loess. This section was sampled at

intervals of 10 cm from S1 to S0. A total of 120samples for MS, Fet and mollusks have beenstudied. The data for annual mean tempera-ture (AMT) and annual mean precipitation(AMP) at the modern surface soil sites wereused to set up the multiple regression climaticfunctions. Fig. 3 shows temperature and pre-cipitation variation in Luochuan over the past11,000 ka based on the non-linear inversionmethod. From Fig. 3, we can see that there aresome phase differences in the variations of thethree proxy records. However, the AMT andAMP satisfy the non-linear relationship be-tween the three climatic proxies and tempera-ture and precipitation within acceptable lim-its, indicating a mutually consistent solution ofthe three climatic proxies.

NAIQIN WU, HOUYUAN LU, ZHENGTANG GUOInstitute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029, China

Reconstruction of Paleoclimate in the Loess Plateau usingNon-Linear Mathematical Methods

Fig. 3: Variations in thethree proxy records ofVallonia cf. pulchella,Fet and MS in theLuochuan loess sectionsince the last interglacialtogether with variationsin AMT and AMP asderived from the non-linear inversion of thesethree proxy indicators.

Climatic Instability during the PenultimateGlaciation: Evidence from theChinese Loess Deposits

Since the recognition of millennial-scale climatic oscillations in theGreenland ice cores, high-resolution records derived from variousdeposits all over the world have convincingly demonstrated thatpaleoclimatic variability of this kind is recorded in different parts of theglobal climate system, implying that climate instability during the lastglacial period may be regarded as a global phenomenon. However,most of the high-resolution proxy records obtained hitherto only coverthe last glaciation, and so climatic variability on sub-Milankovitch timescales in the older glacial periods is poorly known. Recently, we gen-erated a high-resolution grain size record at Huining, the northwest-ern part of the Loess Plateau. The loess-soil sequence accumulatedduring the last two glacial-interglacial periods is about 45 m thick inthe Huining section. We took samples of this part at 2 cm intervals. Thissample spacing yields an average depositional time resolution of be-low a hundred years. Examination of the grain size record for the last

Fig. 4: Huining high resolution grain size record continued on page 4

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glaciation shows that the millennial-scale cli-matic variations in the Loess Plateau can becorrelated fairly well with the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles documented in the Green-land ice cores. Fig. 4 (previous page) shows thegrain size curve of the S2-L2-S1 portion atHuining. The soils S2 and S1 were accumu-lated respectively during the penultimateand last interglacial periods; the loess bed L2during the penultimate glaciation. Grain sizechanges in L2 clearly indicate two maximaand three minima, which are obviouslyforced by the precessional changes in theEarth's orbit. When we increase resolution forparts of the grain size minima, as shown inFig. 4, it is seen that frequent, large-ampli-tude, millennial-scale variability also oc-curred during the stadials of the penultimateglaciation. This preliminary result impliesthat millennial-scale climate variability couldbe a common feature in the glacial periods ofthe late Pleistocene.

Z. L. DING, J.Z. REN, J.M. SUN AND T.S. LIU

Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029, China

continued from page 3

Repeated southward excursions of NorthAtlantic polar water during the last intergla-cial (δ18O stage 5, 130-74 ka) are recorded byplanktonic foraminifera and ice-rafted detritus(IRD) in North Atlantic sediment cores, andGreenland ice-sheet cores display quasi-syn-chronous fluctuations. Comparable high-fre-quency variations in the East Asian wintermonsoon climate are discernible in three loess-paleosol profiles in central China that span thelast interglacial (Fig. 5). Peak values of the >40µm quartz fraction and bulk sedimentsamples from the S1 (last-interglacial) accre-tionary paleosol complex reflect major dust-flux events when winter monsoon windsstrengthened. Frequent oscillations of the dust

flux and nine significant dust events are re-corded. Six events, falling between ca. 110 and70 ka, are correlated with cold peaks (C19-24)identified in North Atlantic cores. Two compa-rable dust peaks occur within paleosol S1SS3(= substage 5e); the older of these, dating to ca.121 ka, may correlate with a brief cold eventrecently recognized in high-resolution marineand terrestrial climate-proxy records.

ZHISHENG ANState Key Laboratory of Loess and QuaternaryGeology, Academia Sinica, P.O. Box 17,Xian 710054 ChinaSTEPHEN C. PORTERQuaternary Research Center, University of Washing-ton, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA

Millennial-Scale Climatic Oscillations duringthe Last Interglaciation in Central China

Fig. 5: Loess-Paleosol-Profiles in central China in comparison with North-Atlantic sediment cores andGreenland ice-sheet cores

Seasonal Climatic Variationrecorded by PhytolithAssemblages from the BaojiLoess Sequence in CentralChina over the last 150 ka

153 samples from modern surface soils inChina were collected and analyzed quantita-tively alongside related meteorological data.25 types of opal phytoliths, with significantclimatic linkages, were selected to establishclimatic transfer functions. The modern cli-matic parameters used in this study are basedon data for annual mean temperature andannual mean precipitation over the past 40years from the Chinese National Meteorologi-cal Bureau (1995). Fig. 6 is a percentage dia-gram of 13 major phytolith types from theBaoji loess sequence in the south of the Loess

Fig. 6: Diagram of the percentage frequencies of 13 major phytolith types from the Baoji loess sequence forthe last 150 ka.

The PAGES webpages have been up-dated. For information about PAGES,where to find PAGES publicationsonline, and links to PAGES Scientists,Activities and Tasks point your browserto http://www.pages.unibe.ch/.Comments, or reports of PiltdownMen (missing links), should be sent toalverson@pages.unibe.ch.

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LOESSPlateau. Fig. 7 shows the phytolith-based re-constructions of temperature and precipita-tion in Baoji over the last 150 ka and the 95%confidence interval.

HOUYUAN LU, NAIQIN WU, TUNGSHENG LIU,JIAMO HAN, XIAOGUANG QINInstitute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029, ChinaXIANGJUN SUNInstitute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100093, ChinaYONGJI WANG

First Institute of Oceanography, State OceanicAdministration, Qingdao 266003, China

Fig. 7: Estimated temperature and precipitation variations in Baoji during the last 150 ka based onphytolith-climate transfer functions. Thick lines represent estimated regression values, fine lines are 95%confidence intervals.

The pattern of climate in eastern Asia isdominated by the summer and winter mon-soons (Gao, 1962). The loess-paleosol sequenceon the Loess Plateau of central China consti-tutes an excellent proxy record of variations inEast Asian monsoon climate over the past 2.5Ma (An et al., 1990; 1991; Ding et al., 1995).Magnetic susceptibility (MS) of the loess andpaleosols has been used as a proxy indicatorfor the summer monsoon intensity, i.e., highmagnetic susceptibility values reflect increasedsummer monsoon intensity (An et al., 1991);while the median diameter of quartz (QMD)isolated from the loess and paleosols can beregarded as a proxy index of the strength ofwinter monsoon winds, i.e., the greater thequartz median diameter, the stronger the win-ter monsoon winds (Xiao et al., 1995). Studieson grain-size distribution, oxygen isotopecomposition and micromorphological featuresof monomineralic quartz isolated from sedi-ments of Lake Biwa, central Japan suggestedthat quartz particles finer than 10 µm werederived, through the transport of the wintermonsoon, from arid/semiarid regions of theAsian continent, and thereby can be regardedas eolian quartz (Xiao et al., 1997a). By contrast,quartz grains coarser than 20 µm in the LakeBiwa sediments were considered to be de-rived, through soil erosion, from the surround-ing terrain of the lake (Xiao et al., 1997b). Eolianquartz flux (EQF) to Lake Biwa provides directinformation on variations in the East Asianwinter monsoon strength, i.e., the higher theeolian quartz flux, the stronger the wintermonsoon winds (Xiao et al., 1997a); whereasthe fluvial quartz flux (FQF) reflects significantchanges in paleoprecipitation over the lakearea, and thus can be associated with the inten-sity of the summer monsoon, i.e., high fluvialquartz flux values imply increases in summermonsoon intensity (Xiao et al., 1997b).

As shown in figure 8, the EQF and FQFrecords of Lake Biwa sediments can be well

Comparison of East Asian Monsoon Proxies from the Central China Loess Plateau and Lake Biwamonsoon intensity inferred from the FQF andMS proxies.

These four proxy records of East Asianpaleomonsoon climate can be correlated withthe SPECMAP marine δ18O stages 1 through 6(Martinson et al., 1987) (Fig. 8). The main inter-vals of low EQF and QMD values and highFQF and MS values apparently coincide withSPECMAP δ18O substages 5e, 5c, and 5a, stage3, and the early part of stage 1, while the mainintervals of great EQF and QMD values andlow FQF and MS values occurred during δ18Ostages 4 and 2.

J.L. XIAOInstitute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,P.O. Box 9825, Beijing 100029, Chinajlxiao@public3.bta.net.cn

Fig. 8: Time series of the last ca. 130,000 years comparing the quartz median diameter (QMD) andmagnetic susceptibility (MS) of the loess-paleosol sequence at Luochuan in the central part of the LoessPlateau and the eolian quartz flux (EQF) and fluvial quartz flux (FQF) of Lake Biwa sediments theSPECMAP δ18O record (from Quaternary Science Reviews, in press).

compared with the QMD and MS records ofthe Chinese loess and paleosols. The intervalsof high EQF values correspond to the periodsof great QMD values, whereas the intervals ofhigh FQF values correlate to the periods ofhigh MS values. The EQF and the QMD aswinter monsoon proxies indicate that the win-ter monsoon strengthened during periodsmarked by high EQF and QMD values, and itwas relatively weaker when EQF and QMDvalues were lower. As as summer monsoonproxies, the FQF and the MS reveal significantvariations in the intensity of the summer mon-soon, i.e., the higher the FQF and MS values,the stronger the summer monsoon circulation.Variations in winter monsoon strength indi-cated by the EQF and QMD proxies bear ageneral inverse relation to those in summer

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Climatic change during the last intergla-cial has become an important focus in globalchange research. Improved reconstructionsmay enhance our understanding of possiblefuture climate change. Moreover, there aremajor uncertainties about the reliability ofthe apparent ‘Eemian’ instability recorded inGreenland ice cores (Dansgaard et al., 1993).

The western Loess Plateau contains thethickest loess deposits in the world. The com-bination of rapid, often continuous accumu-lation and weak pedogenesis (hence limited,post-accumulation overprinting by subse-quent weathering), provides one of the bestopportunities to reconstruct past monsoonclimatic changes with high temporal resolu-tion. This in turn points to the area as a cru-cial one for shedding light on climate vari-ability during the Eemian, Isotope Stage 5e.

A late Pleistocene high-resolution loess-paleosol sequence has been obtained from a40-m well dug in a loess section at Jiuzhoutaiin the City of Lanzhou in the western LoessPlateau of China. The last interglacial intervalconsists of three individual paleosols markeddownwards as S1-a, S1-b and S1-c separated

Fig. 9: Diagram showing the loess-paleosol sequence of the Jiuzhoutai well section (a) in Lanzhou on the western Loess Plateau, its age-depth relationship (b),volume magnetic susceptibility measured in the well (c), variations of mass-specific susceptibility ( χ) (d), χ / Ms (saturation magnetization) (e) and superparamagnetic (SP) grains measured on MPMS in the depth 35.3-38.5m. The black bar indicates the Blake event (Fang et al., 1997). Note the covariantchanges of x/Ms and SP grains (f) suggest that the summer monsoon experienced large amplitude and rapid changes during the Eemian interglacial (S1-c),which may correlate with oxygen isotope record of the GRIP ice core from Greenland (Dansgaard et al., 1993)

Last Interglacial sharp Monsoon Fluctuations: Rock Magnetic and Paleomagnetic Evidencefrom High Resolution Loess-Paleosol Sequence, Lanzhou, China

by two loess layers L2-1 and L2-2 (Fig. 9a).Previous study has shown that paleosols S1-a, S1-b and S1-c correlate with sub-stages 5a,5c and 5e of marine isotope records (MIS), re-spectively (Fig. 9c). Samples were taken at 1-2.5 cm intervals for S1 series, yielding resolu-tions of c. 60-150 years per sample.

The Blake Event was found in the paleo-magnetic record at the boundary betweenloess L2-2 and paleosol S1-c after thermal de-magnetization and measurement on a 2Gmagnetometer. This provides an age estima-tion of 119.97 - 114.47 kyr BP for this part ofsequence (Fig. 9d), in good agreement withTL-dates (Fang et al., 1997) (Fig. 9b).

Super-paramagnetic (SP) or ultra-fine(mainly < 0.03 µm) grains have been shownto have a pedogenic origin and are highlysensitive to climatic change, thus providinga powerful tool to reveal summer monsoon.Direct measure of SP grains on MPMS bythermal decay of low temperature isother-mal remanence (Fig. 9f) accords well withestimates from saturation-magnetization(Ms)-normalized mass-specific suscep-tibility (Fig. 9e) for the studied section. Both

show that SP grains are much more abun-dant in paleosols than in loess and reachhighest values in S1-c (Figs. 9e and f). How-ever, within S1-c large fluctuations in SPgrain content are evident, characterized bythree sharp peaks lasting ca. 1-3 kyr andculminating at about 128 kyr, 118 kyr and 116kyr. The amplitude of the second of thesefluctuations, lasting about 4 kyr, reaches ca.75 percent of the full range of variation be-tween paleosol peak and loess values and(Figs. 9d-f). These results suggest that theAsian summer monsoon experienced sig-nificant climatic changes during the EemianInterglacial (MIS 5e), in good agreementwith previous conclusion derived from non-magnetic indicators (Fang et al., 1996).

XIAO-MIN FANG, JI-JUN LIDepartment of Geography, Lanzhou University,Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, ChinaSUBIR BANERJEE

Institute for Rock Magnetism, University of Minnesota,Minneapolis, MN55455-0128, USAROB VAN DER VOO

Department of Geological Sciences, the University ofMichigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1063, USA

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Fig. 10: Correlation of soil formation and summer monsoon enhancements revealed by magneticsusceptibility (B), carbonate content (C) and soil color (D) in the Shajinping loess section, Lanzhou,with the climatic record from the GRIP ice core in Greenland (A). Paleosol identification wasindependently made in field. H indicates Heinrich event. Several meters of the lower partof the section may have been affected somewhat by overbank flooding.

High Resolution Pedogenic and Rock Magnetic Records of Asian Summer MonsoonInstability during the past 60,000 Years from the Chinese Western Loess Plateau

The 23m Shajinping loess section onthe second terrace of Huang He (the Yel-low River) in the City of Lanzhou hasdeveloped at least 20 layers of moder-ately to weakly developed paleosolseach 30-50 cm in thickness, occurring atsimilar intervals of about 1 m (ca. 2,500years), with several very weakly devel-oped soil horizons, during the past60,000 years BP Fig 1). Field observa-tions and laboratory analyses, including

soil micromorphology, have indicatedthat Holocene paleosols are weakly tomoderately developed luvic calcisols intype, characterized by a distinct dullbrown (7.5 YR 5/3) medium angularblocky ped Bw horizon relatively rich inorganic matter and clay content and lowin carbonates (round 9 wt %), and a clearmassive Bk horizon, with carbonates upto 16 wt % as fine nodules, channel coat-ings and infillings. Paleosols formed

during Marine Isotope Stages 2, 3 and 4are mainly weakly developed and ap-pear as thin, dull, yellowish brown (10YR 5/4 - 4/3) massive-medium blockyped ochric A horizons, or mollic A hori-zons slightly rich in organic matter andclay content and low in carbonates(round 9-10 wt %) in the form of finenodules and thin coatings. However,there are six moderately developedpaleosols pedogenically similar to theHolocene paleosols. The organic matterand clay content in the Bw horizons andcarbonate enrichment in the Bk horizonsare only slightly lower than in the Ho-locene paleosols. These six paleosolsoccur at similar intervals of 3-4 m (abouthalf of the precession cycle, i.e. 10,000 +/- 1000 years) and seem to correlate wellwith the initial warm peaks of eachBond cycle (Fig. 10).

Continuous sampling of the section at2.5-5 cm intervals for measurement of car-bonate content and magnetic susceptibil-ity has yielded decadal- to century-scaleclimatic records. These records demon-strate that the Asian summer monsoonexperienced rapid episodic ‘warm pulses’lasting only about several hundred to twothousand years during Isotope Stages 2and 3. These warm pulses form groupscharacterized by high initial, then subse-quently declining peaks. They may corre-late with ‘warm’ peaks in the oxygen iso-tope record from the GRIP ice core. Mostof these warm pulses occur in non- orquasi-orbital forcing cycles and have pe-dogenic responses as described above.This provides evidence for changes in theAsian summer monsoon on millennialtimescales during the last glacial andpoints to instability similar to that identi-fied by the Dansgaard-Oeschger eventsand Bond cycles in the Northern Atlantic.

XIAO-MIN FANG, BAO-TIANPAN, JI-JUN LI,DONG-HONG GUAN

Department of Geography, Lanzhou University,Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, ChinaYUGO ONOGraduate School of Environmental Earth Science,Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060 JapanHITOSHI FUKUSAWADepartment of Applied Biochemistry, University ofTsukuba, Tennou-dai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JapanSHIZUO NAGATSUKADepartment of Geography, Faculty of Science, TokyoMetropolitan University, Hachioji, 192-03 JapanMASAYUKI TORII

Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences, GraduateSchool of Sciences, Kyoto University,Kyoto, 606-01 Japan

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We have now correlated one glacial-ageice-core dust interval of about 3,000 years du-ration with the CLP, but have not yet com-pleted analysis of other glacial or interglacialintervals. However, to the degree that the dustin the Summit ice cores represents a record ofatmospheric conditions and climate in andaround the region of the CLP, it constitutes arecord that has a much more precise absolutestratigraphy and greater temporal resolutionthan any single section in the CLP. The influ-ence of Chinese and Mongolian loess has thusbeen shown to extend far beyond the CLP, allthe way to Greenland, and would certainlyextend eastward even beyond Greenland ifthere were other depositories of eolian dust aswell preserved as is polar ice. Perhaps we willfind that the dust from the Chinese Loess Pla-teau and its source areas circles the entirenorthern hemisphere when we extend ourstudies to dust trapped in the ice caps of theTibetan plateau.

PIERRE E. BISCAYELamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of ColumbiaUniversity, Palisades NY 10964, USAbiscaye@ldeo.columbia.eduFRANCIS E. GROUSSETDépartement Géologie et Océanographie, UniversitéBordeaux 1, Avenue des Facultés, 33405 Talence-cedex, France, grousset@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr

LOESS

The Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), theworld’s largest accumulation of loess, is amajor geological feature of China (4.4 x 105

km2), and therefore a significant feature ofAsia. It is generally considered to have beenformed beginning around 2.5 my ago by eo-lian deposition of sediment from desert areassuch as the Gobi and the Takla Makan whichare located to the north and northwest - the di-rection of generally increasing bed thicknessand grain size (Liu, 1985). Certainly the initialformation of this eolian feature represents amajor shift in the climate of the area, as well asof the globe, in that the initial formation of theCLP is generally connected to the onset of themajor continental glaciations that character-ized the Pleistocene epoch. The displacementof such a huge amount of sediment over dis-tances of hundreds of kilometers to the CLPfrom remote source areas implies that the at-mosphere was extraordinarily dusty duringperiods of high transport. Even present-day,less intense dust storms originating out of thearid areas of China are sufficiently intense tohave a specific name in downwind Japan —“kosha events”.

That the record of modern eolian dusttransport extends beyond the borders of con-tinental deserts has been known for decades,at least since Radczewski reported eolianquartz (“Wüstenquarz”) in Atlantic sedi-ments offshore of the Sahara (1939). Similarly,the band of quartz-rich sediment across theNorth Pacific at about the latitude of the west-erlies was attributed to desert sources by Rexand Goldberg (1958), although the latter au-thors did not specifically mention the desertsof eastern Asia. Subsequent research on NorthPacific sediments has specifically tied themarine record of dust to eastern Asia, and hasshown that the flux of desert dust to the oceanhas varied significantly with time, presum-ably reflecting changes in the East Asian cli-mate and in the atmospheric conditions re-sponsible for dust deflation and transport(Nakai et al., 1993; Leinen et al., 1994; Rea,1994; Asahara et al., 1995).

We have more recently discovered inGreenland an even more distal record of theclimate conditions associated with the CLPand its source deserts. It has been known forsome time that the concentration of dust fall-ing on high-latitude ice caps has varied greatlyover time with high concentrations generallyreflecting glacial periods, while lower concen-trations characterize interglacial periods suchas the present Holocene (Thompson andMosley-Thompson, 1980). It was not, how-ever, until the recent drilling of the long icecores at Summit, Greenland, that this purelyatmospheric record was discovered to containvariations in dust content of 103-102 years du-

ration within glacial periods (and perhapswithin interglacials) that are almost as great asthose variations associated with glacial-inter-glacials and occurring on 105-104 yeartimescales. Furthermore, the transitions be-tween different dust concentration levels, andthe variations in climate that they represent,took place with extreme abruptness, on theorder of 10 years. The causes of these extremevariations in the dust record, ranging overperiods from 101 to105 years, have been thesubject of more speculation than analysis.

The approach that we and our colleagueshave taken to the solution of this problem is tofirst determine from what continentallocation(s) the dust originates. In previousstudies we used the Sr and Nd isotopic com-positions of East Antarctic dust from three gla-cial periods to determine that it was derivedfrom Patagonia (Grousset et al., 1992; Basile etal., 1997). This connection was established bycomparing the isotopic characteristics of theice-core dusts to those of eolian samples(loesses, desert sands and dusts) from all po-tential source areas. For our initial work on theGreenland ice-core dusts from the GISP2 core,we added clay mineralogy, which reflects theweathering regime and hence the climate inthe source area, as well as the isotopic compo-sition of Pb, which, like Sr and Nd, reflects thelithology and geologic age of the source area,as additional tracers. We analyzed these four,largely independent tracer characteristics ofthe 23-26 thousand-year old dust across arange of dust concentrations that varied byabout one order of magnitude. We then com-pared these values to the fine fraction of aboutone hundred loess and desertic PSA samplesfrom more than two dozen locations aroundthe northern hemisphere, including samplesfrom the CLP and one of its source areas, theGobi Desert of Mongolia.

Assuming that our PSA samples ad-equately represent the northern hemispheredust source areas, the results of these compari-sons shows, rather unequivocally, that thedust that fell on Summit, Greenland from 23 to26 thousand years ago, just prior to the LastGlacial Maximum, was derived from the CLPand its source area the Gobi, and probablyother east Asian desert areas to the northwest(Biscaye et al., 1997). Furthermore, based onthe fact that the apparent source area did notchange significantly during that time interval,despite the large changes in dust concentra-tion levels, we conclude that the differences industiness must have been due to changes inwind velocity, and hence the effectiveness ofdeflation and transportation in the East Asiansource area, and not to expansion or contrac-tion of source area size or changes in sourcelocations (Biscaye et al., 1997).

The Chinese Loess Plateau — Far and Wide

PAGES International Project OfficeBärenplatz 2

CH-3011 Bern, SwitzerlandTel: +41 31 312 3133

Fax: +41 31 312 3168e-mail: pages@pages.unibe.ch

http://www.pages.unibe.ch/

Newsletter Editors:Frank Oldfield and Keith Alverson

Layout:Niklaus Schranz

Printed on recycled paper

Erratum:In the newly published PAGES Scienceand Implementation plan figure 10 onpage 158 has an incorrect reference.The correct reference is: Tabacco, I.,Passerini, A., Corbelli, F., andGorman, M. (in press) Journal of Gla-ciology. Determination of the surfaceand bed topography at DomeConcordia (East Antarctica).

9

LOESS

Grain size and susceptibility profiles fromWupu (approximately 250 km southeast ofYulin) and Yannchang (approximately 330km south of Yulin) are compared withbenthic foraminifera δ18O records from theMaldives area of the tropical Indian Ocean(Bassinot et al., 1994), and ODP 677 in theeastern equatorial Pacific Ocean (Shackletonet al., 1990; Shackleton, 1996). Grain size andmagnetic susceptibility profiles from theLoess Plateau are proxies for variations inwinter and summer monsoon intensity, re-spectively. Loess grain size records show ahigh degree of coherency with the SPECMAPrecord (Imbrie et al., 1984) of ice volume varia-tions (Ding et al., 1994). Hence, increases in icevolume may intensify the Siberian-Mongo-lian high pressure system by down streamcooling of mid-latitude air, leading to stron-ger winter monsoon winds and a larger over-all median grain size of loess (Ding et al.,1994). Further, the Mass Accumulation Rate(MAR = linear sedimentation rate times drybulk density) of loess is a function of aridity(Rea, 1994) and the availability of loess at itssource. The benthic foraminifera δ18O recordis commonly regarded as a proxy for ice vol-ume variations since very little temperatureand salinity fractionation should occur in thedeepest parts of the oceans, and assumingthat species variations are minimal. The δ18Orecord from MD900963 is particularly wellexpressed owing to a local salinity effect,most likely controlled by changes in mon-soon intensity (Bassinot et al., 1994).

Our purpose is to contrast proxy climaterecords from the Loess Plateau with the oce-anic records, and search for similarities and

differences in the response of the proxyrecords to climate change. In particular wecompare the proxy response of MIS 2 (loesssubhorizon L1-1) and MIS 4 (subhorizonL1-5). We do not attempt to compare the am-plitude of responses; nevertheless, if theproxy records from the Loess Plateau are re-sponding to variations in ice volume then weshould see some similarities in the profiles.However, differences observed between ter-restrial and oceanic proxy climatic signalsmay be due to different responses of theseproxy signals to internal and external climateforcing mechanisms, sampling variations,and proxy tool limitations.

Fig. 11 demonstrates the first order corre-lations of the last interglacial-glacial cycle us-ing the MIS 5/6 transition as the datum (e.g.‘Termination II’ of Broecker and Van Donk,1970). This transition is regarded as being areasonably synchronous global event. In fig-ure 11 we use depth scales from each loca-tion and attempt to avoid the influence ofage models that assume constant sedimen-tation rates between control points. While itmay be true that sedimentation rates arefairly constant in geologic time, the assump-tion of linear sedimentation rates in highresolution studies (e.g. 1000 years persample or less) is tenuous. For example, inthe Loess Plateau loess sedimentation ratesare higher during cold periods than inwarmer times (Rutter et al., 1995).

Subhorizon L1-1 is bordered by the Ho-locene soil (S0) above and a weak paleosol(L13) below. The grain size profile withinloess subhorizon L1-1 shows a lower mediangrain size in the bottom half of the subhorizon

with an abrupt transition to a higher mediangrain size in the upper part of the subhorizon.This profile is similar to the ocean δ18O profilesindicating a high degree of coherency be-tween median grain size (wind strength) andice volume variations during MIS 2. Note thatthe base of MIS 2 in oceanic records is morecommonly picked above our interpretation ofthe MIS 2/3 boundary, and represents a revi-sion of the original MIS 2 boundary.

Loess subhorizon L1-5 (MIS 4) in theWupu and Yanchang sections are about 5.3and 4.8 meters thick, respectively, while loesssubhorizon L1-1 (MIS 2) is about 2.1 and 3.0meters thick, respectively. We presently donot know the dry bulk densities of L1-1 andL1-5 and cannot calculate a MAR. However,using SPECMAP (Imbrie et al., 1984) ages forthe top of MIS 2.0 (12 ka). 3.0 (24 ka), 4.0 (59ka) and 5.0 (71 ka) the accumulation rates ofL1-1 and L1-5 at Wupu are 0.175 meters/kaand 0.44 meters/ka, while the accumulationrates at Yanchang are 0.25 meters/ka and 0.4meters/ka, respectively. Hence, loess accu-mulations rates are higher and ice volumeslower during MIS 4 than during MIS 2. Thisis apparently at odds with recent work(Shackleton et al., 1995), suggesting that dustaccumulation in China is highly coherentwith the δ18O global ice volume record.Shackleton et al. (1995), however, were dealingwith glacial to interglacial variations over thepast 2.5-3.0 million years as opposed to ourloess record of the last glaciation (L1).

In conclusion, we are refining the stratig-raphy of oceanic and loess records to im-prove understanding of climate change andthe relationship between the global ice vol-umes and the loess record. Our revision ofthe base of MIS 2 provides a more coherentrecord of the relationship between variationsin loess grain size (e.g. wind strength) and icevolumes during MIS 2. Additionally, we sur-mise that the higher accumulation rates dur-ing L1-5 may be related to the east Europeanglacial record, where older glaciations on theRussian Plain were more extensive (Velich-ko, 1990). If our conjecture is correct, then ac-cumulation rates during MIS 4 would be re-lated to regional ice volumes rather thanglobal ice volume.

CHARLES D. ROKOSH, NAT W. RUTTER AND E.C. LITTLEDepartment of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences,University of Alberta, T6G 2E3 Edmonton, Canadadrokosh@gpu.srv.ualberta.canat.rutter@ualberta.caZHONGLI DING AND T. SUN

Institute of Geology, C.A.S,, P.O.Box 9825,100029 Beijing, Chinadingzl@midwest.com.cn

Comparing the Stratigraphy of the Last Glaciation in the Loess Plateau and the Indian and Pacific Oceans

Fig. 11: Stratigraphy of the last Glaciation (Marine Isotope Stages 2, 3 and 4). Samples at 5cm intervals inthe loess-paleosol sections.

Wupu

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High Resolution Records from China, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans

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10

F.H. CHEN AND J.M. WANGDepartment of Geography, Lanzhou University,Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, ChinaJ. BLOEMENDALDepartment of Geography, University of Liverpool,Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

LOESS

Atmospheric interpretations based on el-emental mass-particle size distributions(MSDs) have shown that the Chinese loess/paleosol sediment is composed mainly (~90%of total mass) of eolian mineral dust that origi-nated from the major desert-sources for Asiandust situated in northern and northwesternChina. The dust storms and dustfall events ininland China provide the physical basis for theeolian theory of loess origin. Seasonal peaks indust concentrations over the open North Pa-cific also have been linked to the occurrence ofdust storms in Asia.

Recently, we estimated the dust-derivedelemental deposition rates to the Loess Pla-teau using data for dust storm (DS) and non-dust storm (N-DS) periods. Two major find-ings of the studies were (1) that dry depositionwas more important than wet deposition interms of annual dust flux; and (2) that on along-term basis, the dry input of dust to theloess was mainly due to normal transportconditions, i.e., days on which dust was sus-pended in the atmosphere but dust stormswere not reported as part of the routine me-teorological observations. This second finding

was unexpected because it contrasts with theinterpretation that the loess accumulations aremainly attributable to strong dust storms anddustfall events. Furthermore, this conclusionhas generated some controversy in relation tothe hemispheric to global-scale transport ofAsian dust.

Here we further compare data for the par-ticle size distributions in present atmosphericaerosol samples (Al) with data for the last-in-terglacial paleosol (S1) and the Malan, last gla-ciation, loess (L1) from the well-knownLuochuan loess/paleosol sequence. The majorpurpose of comparing the source materialswith the sedimentary deposits is to evaluatethe relative importance of DS vs. N-DS pro-cesses for dust transport during glacial andinterglacial intervals. Particle size distribu-tions (PSDs) also are used to evaluate the pat-terns for Asian dust transport over regionaland greater spatial scales. The regional-scaletransport of Asian dust during interglacialstages is suggested to be mainly attributable toN-DS processes and is dominated by north-westerly surface winds. Conversely, duringglacial stages the impact of dust storms on the

Climate changes during the last intergla-cial may serve as an analog for future globalchanges. However, our current understand-ing of the last interglacial climate is still lim-ited. Although the Chinese loess-paleosol se-quence is widely recognized as one of thebest terrestrial Quaternary climatic recorders,the paleosol S1 in the central Loess Plateauarea, where most of studies have been con-ducted, is too thin (ca. 2 m) to yield high-reso-lution climatic records of the last interglacial.

However, the thick aggradationalpaleosol S1 (6-8 m) in the northwestern mar-gin of the Chinese Loess Plateau, has pre-served high-resolution records which pro-vide considerable insight into the temporalvariations of the East Asian monsoon andthus shed new light on the forcing factors.The paleosol S1 at the two sections investi-gated here consists of five sub-units: threewell-developed paleosols and two inter-bedded loess layers. According to the mod-eled ages based on the depth of the Blake pa-leomagnetic event and TL dates, the threepaleosols developed in marine oxygen iso-tope stage (MIS) 5a, 5c, and 5e, and the twoloess layers were deposited in MIS 5b and 5d,respectively. The frequency-dependent mag-netic susceptibility, as well as the concentra-tion of secondary carbonate, is used as an in-dicator of the summer monsoon intensity,

and the median particle size as an indicatorof the winter monsoon intensity.

The results suggest that the northwesternmargin of the Chinese Loess Plateau experi-enced the strongest summer monsoon inten-sity in MIS 5e and the weakest in MIS 5a,among the three warmer periods during MIS5. The summer monsoon was weaker in MIS5b than in MIS 5d. A dusty interval inter-rupted the second warmer period (5c) and asoil-forming event interrupted the first colderperiod (5d). The results also suggest that thedirections of changes in the intensities of sum-mer and winter monsoons may not alwayshave varied in inverse proportion. For ex-ample, the weakest summer monsoon oc-curred in MIS 5a during which the wintermonsoon was not the strongest. We furtherconclude that the winter monsoon during thelast interglacial was probably driven by glo-bal ice volume fluctuations, while the sum-mer monsoon was primarily controlled by thenorthern hemisphere solar insolation and wasprobably modified by a feedback mechanism.That is, the climatic buffering effect of low lati-tude oceans may have distorted the responseof the summer monsoon to insolation varia-tions. Finally, our results do not contain evi-dence of climatic instability in MIS 5e, eventhough the study area is situated in a regionwhich has been sensitive to climatic changes.

Glacial and Interglacial Patterns for Asian Dust Transportaccumulation of loess is enhanced. These re-gional effects are in contrast to the global-dis-persal of dust that is associated with transportby upper-level westerly winds and is mainlythe result of desert dust storms during bothglacial and interglacial conditions. Temporaldifferences in the dust transport patterns to theLoess Plateau suggest that the variability inthe coarse particle fraction (>20 micron) dur-ing interglacial times is not directly attribut-able to the strong dust storms and dust fallevents that have been linked to a strengthen-ing of East Asian winter monsoonal winds.This is in contrast to the dust deposition ratesthat are strongly influenced by the monsoonalcirculation.

XIAO Y. ZHANG AND ZHI S. ANState Key Laboratory of Loess & Quaternary Geology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 17,Xian 710054, ChinaR. ARIMOTOCarlsbad Environmental Monitoring & ResearchCenter, New Mexico State University,1400 University Drive, Carlsbad,New Mexico 88220, USA

East Asian Monsoon Variations during the Last Interglacial: Evidence from the Northwestern Marginof the Chinese Loess Plateau

Fig. 12: Percentage frequency dependent magneticsusceptibility, mean particle diameter and clay-siltratio variations through MIS 5e in the semi-aridXiniang Basin. Parallel results have been obtainedfrom the semi-humid Linxia basin (see Chen, F.H.,Bloemendal, J., Feng, Z.D., Wang, J.M., Parker, E.and Guo, Z.T., Quarternary Science Reviews, inPress).

11

OPEN SCIENCE MEETING

Maria Martha Bianchi (Argentina)Tracing fluctuations in the strength of Westerliesat 41°S using Late Glacial - Holocene pollenrecords from North Western PatagoniaVladimir O. Elias (Brazil)A chemical tracer for the reconstruction of for-est fires in the Amazonas environment and geo-logical recordRashit Hantemirov (Russia)A 5,000 year larch tree-ring record from thenorth of West-Siberian Plain and its applicationsto palaeoclimatic studies

Nejib Kallel (Tunisia)Mediterranian pluvial periods and sapropelformation during the last 200,000 yearsA.K. Singhvi (India)Synthesis of luminescence chronology of loessaccumulation episodes and implications forglobal land-sea correlationJule Xiao (China)East Asian monsoon variation during the last130,000 years: Evidence from the Loess Pla-teau of China and Lake Biwa of Japan

Winners of the Poster Competition for Young Scientists from Developing Countries

sponsored by Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London

Report on Open Science Meeting and Panel DiscussionThe first PAGES Open Science Meeting

‘Past Global Changes and their Significance forthe Future’, jointly organised by PAGES andthe Environmental Changes Research Centre(ECRC), University College London, was heldin the University of London Senate House,April 20 – 23, 1998. The oral presentations tookthe form of overviews by distinguished invitedspeakers whose remit was to present the state-of-the-art in all the main aspects of past globalchange research within the context of IGBP. Inaddition, over 200 posters were displayed. Thepublished output from the meeting includes a140 page volume of Abstracts (containing over350 items) available from the PAGES ProjectOffice and also via the PAGES web site (http://www.pages.unibe.ch/). A double special is-sue of the Quaternary Science Reviews, contain-ing review papers by each of the invited speak-ers will be published in 1999 and will also beavailable in book form. It is hoped to distributea CD-ROM of the PAGES Data Base along withthis volume.

The meeting culminated in a panel discus-sion chaired by Professor Chris Rapley, Direc-tor of the British Antarctic Survey and formerExecutive Director of the InternationalGeosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).Members of the panel were Sir JohnHoughton, co-chairman of the Science Assess-ment Working Group of the Intergovernmen-tal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ProfessorHartmut Grassl, Director of the Joint PlanningStaff for the World Climate ResearchProgramme (WCRP), Bill Hare, Climate PolicyDirector of Greenpeace International, RayBradley, Professor of Climatology at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts and Chair of thePAGES Scientific Steering Committee (SSC)and Jonathan Overpeck, Head of the USNOAA Paleoclimatology Program, Director ofthe World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatologyand member of the PAGES SSC.

The key aims of the panel discussion wereto link the research agenda of PAGES, as out-lined in the presentations and its recently pub-lished ‘Status Report and ImplementationPlan’ as effectively as possible to the concernsof all those dealing with the prediction andmanagement of future global changes andtheir impacts on human society. The panelmembers from outside PAGES made intro-ductory statements to open the discussion.

Sir John Houghton stressed the essentialrole of PAGES science in:• validating climate and other earth systemmodels.• increasing the quantitative understanding ofclimate sensitivity to different forcings.• improving parameterisation of key earthsystem processes involved in climate change,for example biosphere feedbacks.• characterising climate regimes in time andspace and documenting their role in the pat-tern of variability at regional level.• highlighting the importance of rapidchange and of the feedbacks and non-linearprocesses involved.• detailing the impacts of climate variability onother environmental systems and especially onhuman activities by presenting a paleo-per-spective on human adaptability and on theproblems involved in planning for sustain-ability in a future dominated by change.

Professor Grassl stressed the links be-tween PAGES and WCRP mainly through theCLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictabil-ity) Study. Inputs to CLIVAR from the PAGESresearch community should lead to an exten-sion of the instrumental record to the whole ofthe last millennium through use of quantita-tively calibrated proxies that achieve preciseand accurate age control, annual resolutionand global significance. Tree rings, varved (an-nually laminated) sediments, ice cores, coralsand speleothems all provide this potential, as

do documentary records. Grassl stressed theneed for collaborative work betweenmodellers and data researchers on the devel-opment of realistic and well validated tran-sient models of non-linear climate change. Healso emphasised the crucial role of isotopestudies in global change research, stressing theneed to strengthen the Global Network forIsotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) and to pro-mote both the PAGES ‘Isotope Mapping’(ISOMAP) programme and the newly estab-lished ‘Isotopes in the Hydrological Cycle’(ISOHYC) initiative as complementary devel-opments of great potential.

Bill Hare emphasised the role paleo-re-search must play by using the information atits disposal to identify critical environmentalthresholds for rapid non-linear change and toestablish the ways in which these may be in-fluenced by different rates of forcing. In thepolicy-related domain, he stressed the need tounderstand better past natural variability and,in particular, the incidence and impacts of ex-treme events - a matter of major concern in riskassessment. By improving our understandingof the role of the terrestrial biosphere in pastclimate change, PAGES should also contributeto evaluating the potential for policy makersmeeting their obligations within the ClimateConvention by increasing biomass rather thanreducing carbon emissions. Hare also pointedup the urgent need to use paleo-records moreeffectively in documenting the interlinkedpast variations in global ice-volume, sea-leveland coastal change, so that future changes canbe more effectively predicated and accommo-dated in policy development.

In concluding the introductory statementsand inviting contributions from the floor, ChrisRapley asked to what extent and in whichways could the paleo-record contribute to ourunderstanding of a forcing so unique and un-precedented as that currently operating.

The Abstract Volume of the LondonOpen Science Meeting contains theabstracts of 27 plenary lectures and330 posters. Copies are availablefrom the IPO, so feel free to order byfax, letter or e-mail or using the orderform on our website: http://www.pages.unibe.ch/Publications/publications.html

continued on bottom of page 12

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The main thrust of the PAGES programhitherto has been towards a better under-standing of past climate change and its impli-cations for the future. Focus 3, which is con-cerned with the past impact of humanactivity on ecological and hydrological sys-tems, has never been fully articulated, thoughsignificant progress has been made in onespecific area – human impact on fluvial sys-tems- thanks to the efforts of Bob Wasson. Atthe recent PAGES SSC meeting, held inPallanza, N. Italy, June 19-21, an overall strat-egy was presented and endorsed. This strat-egy envisages seven interlinked themes as setout below. Their coordination and their ar-ticulation as PAGES Activities and Tasks willbe the responsibility of a small steering groupsoon to be identified. The goals of thepaleoscientists involved in this exercise willinclude the following:• To define, promote and pursue areas ofshared interest between PAGES and otherIGBP project elements.• To contribute fully to the PAGES, andeventually IGBP, syntheses currently beingundertaken.• To push the development of these themessoundly forward toward and during thenext stage of IGBP’s work from the year2000 onwards.

The themes briefly noted below have yetto be fully defined and, in some cases,leaders have yet to be identified. A work-

shop to develop science and implementa-tion plans will be held in late 98/ early 99.Meanwhile, colleagues interested in con-tributing to this aspect of PAGES work areinvited to contact the IPO and its ExecutiveDirector (oldfield@pages.unibe.ch) whowill be responsible for the overall coordina-tion of Focus 3 in its early stages.

Seven themes

The themes envisaged at this stage areas follows:

The history of greenhouse gas exchangesbetween the terrestrial biosphere andatmosphere

These exchanges are of major concern inrelation to understanding present day and fu-ture carbon dioxide and methane fluxes andbudgets. There is an urgent need to improveour insight into the way past changes in landcover and hydrology have affected the fluxesand reservoirs over the non-marine part ofthe biosphere. The task spans a range ofthemes, from the past carbon balance in wet-lands, to the impact of both deforestation andreforestation on CO2 fluxes at both regionaland global scales. Moreover, there is a strongcase for broadening it to include a concernwith nitrogen species. One major advantageof undertaking this task for the past lies in the

way in which it can be linked, on a range oftimescales, to the trace gas record in ice cores.The task is seen as contributing to the GAIMled ‘paleo-trace-gas challenge’ and as helpingto forge links between PAGES and otherIGBP Project Elements, especially GCTE,BAHC and IGAC.

Past biogeochemical fluxes withinfluvial systems

This theme is closely linked to the nexttwo and it embraces the concerns of theBLOP report (Modelling the Transport andTransformation of Terrestrial Materials toFreshwater and Coastal Ecosystems) as wellas one of the main tasks for PAGES within theIGBP inter project initiative on ‘ContinentalAquatic Systems’. It is also currently beingactively promoted by the LUCIFS project(Land Use and Climate Impacts on FluvialSystems during the Period of Agriculture) ledby Bob Wasson. Further information on thisproject is contained in an article in thisNewsletter on page 14.

The historical context of multiple threatsto both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems

Climate variability and future climatechange are only one factor, and perhaps oftennot the most important factor, in the complexof threats facing both terrestrial and aquaticecosystems. Studies of soil erosion, surface

PAGES Focus 3: A new Initiative on past Human Impacts

FOCUS 3

A wide-ranging discussion followed inwhich the issues raised included:• lack of opportunities for developing andfunding effective links between the areas ofenvironmental and social sciences whosecollaboration is essential to the emergingglobal change research agenda.• the need, in an increasingly data-rich re-search environment, to focus on critical timeintervals and processes.• a request to IPCC for a clearer identifica-tion of the burning, unresolved questions towhich paleo-research should make a crucialcontribution. Suki Manabe, drawing up hisown list, suggested the following:

- can we solve the problem of the ‘miss-ing carbon sink’ through a concerted at-tack using the stable isotopes of carbonto better characterise the sinks, sourcesand fluxes?- will global warming really reducesurface salinity in the North Atlantic?- which are the key aerosols in climatefeedback and what are their effects?- what are the most important observa-

tional activities required to develop andvalidate models?

• the need for present day calibration to belinked to paleo-research projects. This maybe one of the ways in which, given adequatecoordination, essential monitoring pro-grammes can be sustained.• the challenge of incorporating hypothesistesting in the present research agenda, forexample to test the possible role of marinebiota in climate forcing.• the urgent need, in some parts of theworld, for more AMS radiocarbon measure-ment facilities worldwide, both for datingand for developing further the ‘tracer’ roleof radiocarbon.• the strong desirability of broadening thePAGES research agenda to encompass morefully other aspects of past global changethan climate.• the need to increase awareness of therelative magnitudes of changes in largescale averages. For example, the ‘Little IceAge’ had major impacts, yet, over thenorthern hemisphere as a whole, appears

to have been only 0.5 to 1°C cooler than thelast few decades. In contrast, the IPCCworst case envisages a rapid warming ofup to 4°C.

The leading points made by the panelmembers and the ensuing discussion pro-vided ample justification for regardingPAGES research as a vital contribution tounderstanding future environmentalchange and its human implications. Theyalso provided many pointers to the waysin which the existing research agenda canbe shaped in order to increase its impactand relevance. Our central task is to usethe record from the past to shed light onwhat predicted future changes will actu-ally mean for a still rapidly growingworld population for which the goals ofsustainable development and the realitiesof environmental change will be inti-mately linked.

FRANK OLDFIELDExecutive Director, PAGES IPOoldfield@pages.unibe.ch

Open Science Meeting, continued from page 11

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FOCUS 3water acidification and eutrophication as wellas the amelioration of the effects of these pro-cesses requires that they be set in historicalcontext. Lake sediments serve as archives of allthese processes, including the more recentlyrecognized threats posed by increased nitro-gen deposition and contamination by a rangeof ‘new’ compounds. Well-focused paleodatais essential for setting present day monitoringin time context as well as for model evalua-tion. This may be best illustrated by work onthe history of acidification and eutrophicationcarried out world-wide over the last two tothree decades in response to urgent environ-mental problems. This theme clearly interactsstrongly with parts of the GCTE and LUCCscience agendas.

Historical perspectives on water quality/lake ecosystems

This theme is closely linked to the onesabove and is, for the moment, separatedfrom 3 only because it represents a signifi-cant part of PAGES input to the IGBP ‘’Con-tinental Aquatic Systems’ inter-project al-ready mentioned. It has now been acceptedas a PAGES Activity within Focus 3, led byRick Battarbee.

Non-linear ecosystem changes in thegeologically recent past

Many researchers within the IGBP com-munity rely on developing models of changethrough time by postulating temporal link-ages between the different elements in a spa-tial mosaic. This approach has both strengthsand weaknesses. One of the latter arises fromthe problem of rapid non-linear shifts in eco-system function once key thresholds (e.g. inwater retention or nutrient cycling) are trans-gressed. The paleo record is rich in evidencefor such changes and there is a need to gen-erate a better awareness of their causes andeffects especially where the record from thepast can be used to improve our understand-ing of highly stressed ecosystems at thepresent day.

Global and regional time-slicereconstructions

The well-developed BIOME 6000 pro-gram is an example of this type of activity.The need now is for reconstructions, espe-cially of terrestrial vegetation and land cover,for the last 200 - 300 years, the period of rap-idly accelerating change and human impact.This will call for an integration ofpaleorecords from sources as diverse as pol-len analyses and past tax returns, and it willcontribute directly to the needs of GCTE andLUCC, as well as to the theme identified un-der 1 above. It will be one of the themes in ajoint PAGES-LUCC workshop planned forNovember 1998.

The historical context of contemporaryand future changes in areas of high‘value’ and/or vulnerability

In several cases, LUCC and GCTE, for ex-ample, envision a detailed focus on a specificregion. In one case at least, the LBA inAmazonia, there is a coordinated IGBP activityacross a wide range of Project Elements. Wheresuch regions are defined, whether as transectsacross ecozones or as areas of concentrated re-search, PAGES can play an important role inplacing changes in present day ecosystems andin the hydrology of the region in a longer timeperspective. This can provide a dynamicbaseline for future monitoring, an insight intoprocesses operating on timescales longer thanthe span of available direct observations, and aquantitative estimate of the range of naturalclimate variability in the recent past. The capac-ity to do this will differ in different parts of theworld, since it depends on the presence of suit-able paleo-archives, ideally high resolutionones with records that come through continu-ously to the present day. Full exploitation ofthese rests on an acknowledgement thatPAGES shares the task of understanding pro-cesses rather than simply providing ‘historicalreconstructions’. Many key processes in the cli-mate system, at the ecosystem level and withinhydrological systems, operate on decadal tocentury timescales. Establishing their function-ing and their effects has an important role toplay in understanding present and future earthsystem dynamics on all spatial scales.

An eye on the future

The themes outlined above must be a cru-cial part of the overall strategies of PAGES andthe IGBP for several reasons. From the PAGESstandpoint, we have to realize that no amountof paleoreconstruction can fully prepare us forfuture changes and future impacts operatingon the present day landscape. The effects ofhuman activity over the last ca. 200 years haveled to transformations much more significantthan those resulting from climate change. Theyhave endowed us with a ‘no-analogue’ bio-sphere as the canvas upon which future cli-mate changes and human activities will inter-act. Moreover, this no-analogue biosphere isthe point of departure for the future part of theglobal experiment to which increasing green-house gas concentrations in the atmospherewill contribute. To consider this complex andrapidly changing canvas without regard to itsantecedents is not a realistic enterprise. PAGESFOCUS 3 is therefore a research domain withinwhich, as the messages from the past overlapthe observations of the present, we may hopeto develop and optimize the interactions be-tween many aspects of IGBP’s endeavors.Human activities are as much drivers of con-

temporary and future environmental changeas are anticipated changes in climate. The inter-play between the two types of forcing is of vi-tal concern and the history of their interactionis ignored at our peril, especially in the realmof future impacts and their integrated assess-ment. In this respect, the proposed FOCUS 3initiatives are a response to human needs aswell as to the emerging research agendas ofnational and international funding agencies.

A call for participation

The various themes outlined above areclosely interwoven and will require a coordi-nated network approach for their realization.We can illustrate this simply by identifying thekey archives for many of the themes, namelylacustrine and high resolution, near-shoremarine sediment records of changing landcover, associated biogeochemical fluxes andtheir impacts on both terrestrial and aquaticecosystem structure and function. There areother vital linking concerns. The concept ofsustainability has no realistic meaning unlessit accommodates what we know of pastclimate variability, human activities and theconsequences of their interaction. Equally, de-velopment of the themes proposed is a prere-quisite for model evaluation, which, in turnserves to improve predictive capability.

The first task is to identify a cohort of poten-tial participants ready to share the challengesimplicit in this proposal. An immense volumeof highly relevant data already exists. One ofour main roles must be to evaluate, filter, coor-dinate and systematize what is already known,as it bears on the key issues already partly iden-tified in the outlines above. This ‘prospectus’therefore comes with a request that all inter-ested scientists contact us in the PAGES Officein Bern with an outline of their own perspec-tives and of the potential roles they may beprepared to play. In some cases, as for examplein the case of aquatic ecosystems and of humanimpact on fluvial systems, the leaders (RickBattarbee and Bob Wasson respectively) havebeen identified and work is already in progress.In other cases, there is a pressing need to iden-tify those who will be prepared to play a cru-cial, active role in coordination and leadership.Again, we are putting this proposal forward inan effort to solicit both potential volunteers andnominees. By joining in such an effort, our hopeis that you will not only contribute to makingthe best possible use of current knowledge andongoing research; you will also be helping todefine key aspects of the global change researchagenda for the future.

FRANK OLDFIELD

Executive Director, PAGES IPOoldfield@pages.unibe.ch

14

BOB WASSONGeography Department, Australian National University,Canberra 0200, Australiarobert.wasson@anu.edu.au

Second Workshop on GlobalPaleoenvironmental DataBOULDER, CO, USA, FEBRUARY 9-12, 1998

Putting individual paleorecords into amulti-proxy, multi-disciplinary, global contextis the only way to synthesize a truly globalpicture of past climatic and environmentalchange. The difficulties inherent in synthesiz-ing research across-disciplines and betweencountries are well known, but not insur-mountable. Many of the past successes inpaleodata management, including the hot-off-the-presses Greenland Ice Core Data CD,Ocean Drilling Program Database, Interna-tional Tree Ring Data Bank, and North Ameri-can and European Pollen Databases have un-derstandably been organized independently,primarily along disciplinary and geographi-cal lines. This workshop brought togetherdata management experts from 43 differentPAGES data efforts in an attempt to producean implementation plan for a broad set ofguidelines on how to set up a regional or the-matic data effort.

One of the principle conclusions of thegroup was the necessity for making databasesconsistent in terms of their required docu-mentation and formats. Databases need to beuseful to people from outside the field, whomay wish to extract information for compara-tive purposes without excessive complica-tions. At the same time they should serve theneeds of scientists who require a detailed ac-counting of the raw data, any methods usedto filter the data and the manner in which cli-matic or environmental information has beeninferred from the data as well as a carefulquantification of the uncertainties. It wasagreed that the primary responsibility forproper interpretation of archived data lieswith the individual users, just as the ultimatequality of the archived data rests with the in-dividual contributors. Nonetheless, effortshould be made to structure and maintain da-tabases so as to maximize ease of access andsubmission and at the same time minimizepotential pitfalls of data misinterpretation.

The group took as its starting point theWorld Data Center System Guide, publishedby the International Council of ScientificUnions in 1996, and the Global Paleoenviron-mental Data report (PAGES report 95-2),which arose out of the first PAGES data work-shop held in 1993. Although these documentsprovide an admirable foundation, the worldof data management has blossomed exponen-tially in the past decade and an update is re-quired. A two part report entitled “ThePAGES Data Guide” is being prepared by the

FOCUS 3

Cumulative Global Change is occurring bythe removal of forests, conversion to cultivationof marginal land, and intensification of cultiva-tion. Systemic Global Change, in the form of cli-mate change and atmospheric chemistry chan-ge, is likely to alter land use patterns during thenext century. All of these changes will affect riv-ers and their catchments, altering flows of wa-ter, sediment, nutrients, carbon and pollutants.Past changes of land and climate are still beingfelt in many catchments, and are difficult to un-derstand without a historical perspective. Fu-ture changes, when superimposed on changestriggered in the past, will produce complex re-sponses which will be difficult to anticipate.

There is therefore a clear need for a betterunderstanding, and a better theory, of fluvialsystem response to land use and climatechange, to anticipate and perhaps predict fu-ture changes, and to understand current dy-namics. While most scientific research has beenconducted in small catchments, most interestin future responses is in large catchments. Thetime period over which a large catchment re-sponds to land use or climate change is muchlonger than is the case for a small catchment;much longer than most instrumental time se-ries. Therefore, the paleoenvironmental recordprovides a unique data repository of catch-ment responses, fully realised over decades tocenturies. This repository, or library, is an un-paralleled set of experiments already carriedout. Our task is to exploit this library.

The PAGES-LUCIFS Project aims to as-semble a library of fluvial system responsesfrom around the world, using case studies se-lected to represent both the modern array ofland use and catchment types, and the areaswhere land use has evolved slowly over mil-lennia and where industrial agriculture hasbeen transplanted to non-agricultural land-scapes during the last few centuries. Modellingof this library of responses is being developedto provide the tools for anticipation and/orprediction of future change.

While Global Change impacts on fluvialsystems are important, change to these sys-tems will also affect the coastal zone by increas-ing the flow of materials to the coast, in somecases, and decreasing flows in other cases. Thechanged transport of carbon and nutrients byrivers also have a role in global biogeochemis-try, particularly in the coastal zone.

Rivers therefore play a role as one of thelinks between the major global biogeochemicalsystems, but, more than that, they are cruciallyimportant to human well being and for manyaquatic organisms. The importance of fluvialsystems, as phenomena that are affected byGlobal Change and affect Global Change, is

Land Use and Climate Impacts on Fluvial Systems duringthe Period of Agriculture (LUCIFS)

clear, along with their enormous societal andecological significance.

The LUCIFS planning group has identifiedfive key questions to guide research, as follows:1. What is the sensitivity to climatic change

of the spatial distribution of sediment, Pand C fluxes in different climate/vegeta-tion regions?

2. How do sediment, P, and C flux sensitivi-ties to land use under climatic shifts reflectstages of land use history?

3. How are fluvial system response sensitivi-ties under various land uses influenced bythe direction of climatic change?

4. What are the thresholds and responseand recovery of fluvial systems for differ-ent combinations of land use andclimatic change?

5. How do engineering and other human-re-lated modifications, including dams andreservoirs, levees, channel morphology al-teration, and wetland drainage enhanceor suppress climatic impacts on sediment,P, and C fluxes in various climate/vegetation regions?In summary, these questions revolve

around the sensitivity of fluvial systems toland use and climate change, both individuallyand in concert. To answer these questions glo-bally, case studies from various parts of theworld are needed.

A LUCIFS workshop is being planned forJanuary 1999. The workshop will have the fol-lowing purposes:

Review progress to date by each grouppresenting its scientific results and plans forthe future.1. Review progress in modelling2. Assemble major conclusions that can be

reached at this stage in the project, possiblyto produce a multi-authored paper for aninternational journal.

3. To agree on research protocols and mod-elling strategies to ensure that futurework is comparable and useful for theLUCIFS objectives.Copies of the LUCIFS Project Implementa-

tion plan (R.J. Wasson ed, 1996 Land Use andClimate Inputs on Fluvial systems During thePeriod of Agriculture, PAGES Workshop Re-port, Series 96-2, 51pp) are available from thePAGES International Project Office. The firstLUCIFS newsletter, from which the text of thisarticle has been drawn, is available on-line athttp://www.pages.unibe.ch/publications/publications.html.

WORKSHOP REPORTS

15

Rovaniemi meeting was an open meeting towhich a wide international audience of scien-tists and social scientists was invited. The ob-jectives of the meeting were to inform thiswider audience about ScanTran, to confirm ingreater detail the objectives of the proposedlong-term programme of research in order toproduce the Science Plan for submission toIGBP, and to identify individuals who wouldcarry forward the process of establishingScanTran as a recognised IGBP high latitudetransect.

Some 90 or so participants registered forthe meeting. Although registration wasstrongly biased towards the terrestrial ecol-ogy (GCTE) community, other IGBP coreprojects were also clearly represented (BAHC,IGAC, PAGES). One session of the formal pre-sentations to the meeting was dedicated toPast Changes, with a keynote presentation byBrian Huntley and Richard Bradshaw that ex-plored some of the key evidence of Holoceneenvironmental and ecological changes in theScanTran region, and an invited presentationby Matti Eronen that discussed especially thedendroclimatological evidence for Holoceneand recent climatic and other environmentalchanges in northern Fennoscandia. A series ofoffered papers then discussed a wide range ofpaleoenvironmental topics. One of the Work-ing Groups during the workshop sessionsalso was dedicated to Past Changes; the re-port from this Working Group will form partof the report from the meeting as a whole thatis due to be published later this year. This re-port also will include extended abstracts ofthe papers presented at the meeting.

The meeting recognised a number of im-portant features of the region encompassedby ScanTran that give added strength to theproposed terrestrial transect study. Amongstthese, the established network of researchsites with field stations and infrastructure tosupport field research is a key asset. Similarly,the existence of a large body of existingknowledge that can underpin any new re-search initiatives is of very great value; suchknowledge includes, in the PAGES context,data from ice cores, from sediments both ofthe surrounding ocean basins and of lacus-trine basins in the region, from studies of peatdeposits, from dendroclimatological investi-gations and from archaeological studies atsites within the region. The long-term pres-ence of human populations in the region, andthe records of their impacts both from ar-chaeological studies and from research intotheir indigenous knowledge, are a special fea-ture of this region that will differentiateScanTran from the other IGBP high latitudetransects. The complementary environmen-tal gradients of latitude and continentalityalso are a special feature of this region. These

WORKSHOP REPORTSmeetings co-conveners David Anderson andRobin Webb with input from all of the attend-ees. The first part will primarily consist of acompendium of data centers within PAGESand in overlapping fields. The second partwill present guidelines on how to set up a re-gional or topical data center. Although thedocument will be produced in hardcopy,available from the WDC-A in Boulder and thePAGES IPO in Bern, it will also be put on thePAGES and WDC-A Internet sites, where itwill be maintained more dynamically andthus remain an invaluable research tool intothe future.

For more information on the evolvingPAGES Data Guide contact David Anderson(dma@paleosun.ngdc.noaa.gov) or look forupdates on the PAGES and WDC-A web sites(http://www.pages.unibe.ch/ and http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html).

KEITH ALVERSON

PAGES IPO, alverson@pages.unibe.ch

PEP1: Paleoclimateof the AmericasMERIDA, VENEZUELA, MARCH 16-20, 1998

Over seventy scientists from all over theworld, studying paleoclimate from Argentinato Alaska, assembled to address interhemi-spheric linkages in past climatic and environ-mental change in the Americas. The meetingbegan with a session on the human dimen-sions of climate change, a topic well deservingof this prime time billing given that theAmericas transect, and in particular theAndes region, has seen an intricate interplayof human habitation and environmentalchange for over ten thousand years. The riseand fall of pre-Colombian civilizations in coa-stal regions, lowlands and the Andes weremeasured alongside records of pollen assem-blages, lake level reconstructions, volcanichistory and levels of snow deposition on highaltitude glaciers. The interplay of technologi-cal, economic and social changes with en-vironment and climate did not end in thedistant past. In more recent decades, ur-banization and poverty have dramaticallyeffected local ecosystems and at the same timeled to increases in the human vulnerability toenvironmental change.

Discussion of Holocene climate variabilityin the Americas was understandably domi-nated by the influence of El-Niño, the signal ofwhich was discussed in records as diverse asAndean lake levels, Galapagos corals, treerings and historical accounts. In the late glacialsession an issue which permeated many of thetalks was synchroneity of the Younger Dryas.

A general consensus was reached that the term‘Younger Dryas’ describes a European eventand should not be forced upon the rich tapes-try of climate variability which is being uncov-ered in the Americas like a square peg into around hole. Interhemispheric comparisons ofGreenland and Antarctic ice core recordsseemed to indicate that the temperatureanomalies are out of phase, such that the Ant-arctic Cold Reversal coincided with theAllerod-Bolling warming and anomalouswarmth in the Antarctic coincided with north-ern hemisphere cool periods associated withDansgaard-Oeschger variability. Ocean datawere presented which seemed to supportthese ice core results, in addition to suggestingperhaps a slight southern hemisphere lead.The monkey wrench thrown in this picturewas the recent Taylor Dome record, from acoastal Antarctic site, which appears to matchthe Greenlandic and not the Antarctic pattern.Polynyas were suggested as one possiblecause for this anomalous record. The full gla-cial session centered around re-evaluation oftropical temperature changes during the LastGlacial Maximum and the climatic effects ofchanges in the ocean thermohaline circulation.

A more detailed reporting of the PEP1meeting will appear in a future PAGES news-letter. A limited number of extended abstractvolumes and further information on PEP1programs are available from Vera Markgraf(markgraf@spot.colorado.edu). The full meet-ing program can be found at http://instaar.colorado.edu/misc/pep.html.

KEITH ALVERSON

PAGES IPO, alverson@pages.unibe.ch

ScanTranROVANIEMI, FINLAND, MARCH19-23, 1998

ScanTran is the name adopted for theIGBP high latitude terrestrial transect (Koch etal., 1995) through Scandinavia and northernEurope. The workshop in Rovaniemi repre-sented the third in a series of workshops lead-ing to the development of the ScanTran Sci-ence Plan that will be submitted to IGBP laterthis year. The initial workshop in Høvik(April 1996) was organised by the NorwegianIGBP Committee; as a result of the positive re-sponse of participants in that workshop to theproposal to develop an integrated scienceplan for a Fennoscandian terrestrial transect asecond workshop was organised. This secondworkshop, held in Trondheim (June 1996), de-veloped a clear outline of the science plan forthe transect, and produced a report (Heal etal., 1997) identifying both the key features ofthe proposed transect and the foci for the pro-posed integrated research programme. The continued on page 16

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ority research targets with respect to past en-vironmental and ecological changes in theregion; implementing the research towardsthese targets then will be a task for the PAGEScommunity who will need to seek funding fortheir work in the usual ways.

BRIAN HUNTLEY

Environmental Research Centre, University of Durham,South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdombrian.huntley@durham.ac.uk

REFERENCES:HEAL, O.W., SÆLTHUN, N.R., HOLTEN, J.I. AND MC

CONNELL, J. (1997). Ecotones, Biome dynamics and theCryosphere: An outline plan for the establishment ofan IGBP high latitude transect in the Scandinavian /Northern European Region (ScanTran). The ResearchCouncil of Norway, Oslo, Norway.

KOCH, G.W., SCHOLES, R.J., STEFFEN, W.L., VITOUSEK, P.M.AND WALKER, B.H. (1995). The IGBP TerrestrialTransects: Science Plan. Report No. 36, The Interna-tional Geosphere Biosphere Programme: A Study ofGlobal Change, Stockholm.

Changes in the Geosphere-Biosphere during the last15,000 YearsBONN, GERMANY, FEBRUARY 6-7, 1998

A fundamental understanding of the pro-cesses which have governed the terrestrialecosystem and its evolution during the mostrecent period of Earth history has yet to beachieved. Natural archives, viewed within anarchaeological context, provide a uniqueglimpse into the evolution of natural changesalongside the influence of mankind. In theserecords lie the clues required to disentanglepast natural changes from those due to an-thropogenic influences. In addition, they pro-vide a spatial and temporal framework ofpast terrestrial ecosystem change upon whichto base understanding of modern and poten-tial future changes. These are the overridinggoals of the multidisciplinary DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft priority program,designed as a contribution to PAGES re-search, funded from 1994 through 2000.Three time slices are defined within this pro-gram: (1) the transition from last glacial toearly Holocene, (2) the postglacial climatic“optimum” and (3) the beginning of inten-sive use of natural resources by humans (ca.1500 BC to 500 AD).

The Bonn workshop, which followed upon the initial agenda setting meeting of Janu-ary 1995, concentrated on improving inter-project collaboration and dissemination of ini-tial results through the establishment of thePANGAEA (PaleoNetwork for Geologicaland Environmental Data) database. Repre-sentatives of the more than 40 individual

projects within this program were in atten-dance presenting results from a diverse suiteof records in coastal sediments, peat, lakesediments, fluvial records and tephras. One ofthe key topics of discussion was the impor-tance of comparison of the continental recordsbeing investigated under the auspices of thisproject with the variability which has beenfound in nearby marine sediment recordsfrom the North Atlantic. Another key mes-sage, especially in terms of the most recentrecords, was that the problem of separatingand understanding natural vs. anthropogenicchange provides a challenge to develop newand innovative thinking, methods, and tech-niques for using paleoarchives.

Representatives from comparable projectsin Great Britain, Switzerland and the Nether-lands were invited to put the project in thelarger European context while presentationsfrom representatives of the PAGES WDC-Adatabase in Boulder and the PAGES IPOstressed the need for compatibility and shar-ing with existing international paleoclimatedatabases. The German IGBP office an-nounced during the meeting the availabilityof three travel grants to support participationof young German scientists at the PAGESOpen Science Meeting.

PANGAEA is an information system toarchive, publish and distribute data from Glo-bal Change research with special emphasis onpaleoclimatic, marine and environmental sci-ences. Data are stored with relatedmetainformation in a relational database, ac-cessible through a client/server system. Theweb client requires a browser with JAVA capa-bilities and write permission to the individualuser’s hard drive. Examples, help menus, andgeographical plotting routines are providedto facilitate ease of operation and data re-trieval. The guest user interface allows accessto published data while a login is required forinter-project use of as yet unpublished data.

PANGAEA is physically housed at theAlfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven andis involved as the data management systemfor numerous German, European Union andinternational projects including:• ADEPD Atlantic Database for ExchangeProcesses at the Deep sea floor (EC)• CRP Cape Roberts Project (International)Ice sheets and climate (EC)• Natural Climate Variability (BMBF)• QUEEN Quaternary environments of theEurasian North (ESF)• SFB 261 The South Atlantic in the Late Qua-ternary: Reconstruction of tracer compositionand current systems (DFG)• Changes in the Geosphere-Biosphere dur-ing the last 15,000 years (DFG)

For further information on the “Changesin the Geosphere-Biosphere during the last15,000 years” project contact the project coor-

features, and their investigation, will be in-corporated explicitly into the Science Plan forScanTran.

In the final plenary session of the meetingagreement was reached as to the identity andstructure of ScanTran and its scientific priori-ties. It is proposed that the Science Plan will bestructured around three themes: 1. Under-standing the processes and mechanisms of eco-logical change in response to environmentalchanges, with a clear focus upon the three prin-cipal ecotones of the region as identified at theTrondheim meeting (Nemoral and Boreal for-est, forest and tundra, continuously and dis-continuously vegetated tundra); 2. Integratingand synthesizing the likely responses of eco-systems to scenarios of potential environmen-tal change, with landscape- to regional-scalemodelling, GIS and remote-sensed data under-pinning the assessment of the consequences ofthese responses for, for example, water supply,trace-gas fluxes, the forestry industry, reindeerhusbandry, etc.; and 3. Examining the optionsfor adaptation to changes and/or for the miti-gation of undesirable changes, including thepolicy and other options. It also is clearly en-visaged that there will be feed-forward andfeed-back processes whereby results from eachtheme will then influence further research inthe other two themes.

In order to carry forward the develop-ment of the Science Plan and of the ScanTranconcept, a Steering Committee was estab-lished at the meeting. Nils Roar Sælthun(NIVA, Oslo) and Janne Hukkinen (ArcticCentre, University of Lapland) were nomi-nated as the Chair and Vice-chair respectivelyof this committee. It also was proposed thatthe Steering Committee should have repre-sentatives from the series of relevant IGBPCore Projects (GCTE, BAHC, IGAC andPAGES at this time) as well as seeking repre-sentation from the IHDP; Brian Huntley is forthe present the PAGES representative on theSteering Committee. In addition to the estab-lishment of the Steering Committee, an offerwas received from the CIRC (Kiruna) to hostthe ScanTran office and secretariat facilities;pending an application for funds to supportthis adequately at least some limited facilitieswould be made available immediately.

Members of the PAGES scientific commu-nity with research interests in Fennoscandia,the northern parts of European Russia or theEuropean Arctic from east Greenland to FranzJosef Land should look out for future news ofScanTran that will be disseminated from timeto time through further reports in this News-letter as well as via a ScanTran home page thatwill be established later this year. If all goesaccording to the schedule outlined at themeeting then the Science Plan should be pub-lished by IGBP in 1999. This will identify pri-

WORKSHOP REPORTScontinued from page 15

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dinator Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Andres(andres@em.uni-frankfurt.de) or access theinternet site http://www.rz.uni-frank-furt.de/FB/fb17/ipg/spp/ (an English ver-sion of this site is under construction). Forfurther information on PANGAEA e-mailinfo@pangaea.de or access the internet sitehttp://www.pangaea.de.

KEITH ALVERSONPAGES IPO, alverson@pages.unibe.ch

Global Change Research inMountain RegionsPONTRESINA, SWITZERLAND, APRIL 15-19, 1998

Mountain regions worldwide present a setof unique challenges and opportunities for thestudy of past and future global climatic andenvironmental change. An exciting new po-tential IGBP inter-core project on Mountainresearch is currently taking shape. Severaldocuments highlighting the mountain re-search agenda have recently been published.IGBP report 43, “Predicting Global ChangeImpacts on Mountain Hydrology and Eco-logy: Integrated Catchment Hydrology/Alti-

6˚

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Frankfurt

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Kassel

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Hamburg

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München

Salzburg

Leipzig

Hof

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Metz

Prag

Bonn

Düsseldorf

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Koblenz

Köln

Karlsruhe

Stuttgart

Zürich

Freiburg

Greifswald

Marburg

Archive:

Coastal sediments

Peat bogs

Lake sediments

Fluvial sediments/collubium/soils

Laacher See Tephra

Calibration of HistoricalData for Reconstruction ofClimate VariationsBARCELONA, SPAIN, JULY 6-8, 1998

An international workshop titled, “Calibra-tion of Historical Data for Reconstruction ofClimate Variations” was held in Barcelona,Spain, on 6–8 July, 1998. The meeting attracted22 participants from 12 countries. The aim ofthe conference was to focus attention on theavailability of documentary materials contain-ing high quality observations of weather andclimate phenomena that could be used to re-construct climatic variability prior to the avail-ability of instrumental records.

Participants were asked to present talks ontwo major topics. The first major workshoptheme dealt with calibration of the historicalproxy record. That is, with the transformationof documentary written evidence (DE) aboutweather events and related phenomena intoquantitative climatic indices. Sessions focusedon the kinds of evidence available, weaknessesand strengths, temporal and spatial resolution,accessibility, etc., with emphasis on the devel-opment of extreme occurrences. A second ma-jor theme concerned the evaluation of time se-ries of temperature and precipitation indicesfrom DE, and comparison of DE-derived indi-ces with other high resolution proxy data. Thatis, this latter focus was aimed at engaging in adiscussion of methodological approaches to cli-matic reconstruction from DE and other proxyclimate records, such as weighted andunweighted indices, cross-calibration, valida-tion and some verification approaches.

The broader context for this meeting was to:1) discuss scientific questions regarding the cali-bration and use of historical DE and other highresolution proxies such as tree-ring records toreconstruct past climatic variability, 2) discussresults of climatic reconstructions based onthese proxy records in the context of PAGES andWCRP goals of defining climatic variability forthe last 2000 years, and 3) to encourage the de-velopment and use of centralized archives forpaleoclimate data, such as the World Data Cen-ter system, for enabling greater access by the sci-entific community to original source material,as well as the calibrated climatic indices.

A key question addressed by the partici-pants was the following: How well can criticalelements of past climate—frequency of occur-rence of past climatic extremes, such as, floods,droughts, storms, etc.—in the past 500 to 1000years, be reconstructed from the available his-torical record, and with what certainty? In par-ticular, the time and spatial synchroneity ofmajor climatic episodes was recognized as animportant goal of historical climate recon-

tudinal Gradient Studies”, documents the re-sults of an international workshop held inKathmandu, Nepal in April 1996. Initial devel-opment of this document arose primarily fromthe combined interests of BAHC and GCTEwith some input from LUCC and PAGES. Thereport was complemented by documents fromtwo follow-up meetings: a LUCC Workshopon “Dynamics of Land Use/Land CoverChange in the Hindukush-Himalayas” inKathmandu, Nepal (April 1997), and the “Eu-ropean Conference on Environmental and So-cietal Change in Mountain Regions” in Ox-ford, UK (December 1997).

At the Pontresina workshop, a smallgroup of about a dozen scientists, includingrepresentatives from all four of the aboveIGBP core project communities gathered todiscuss implementation of a mountainworkplan. The outcome of these discussions,taking the above publications as a startingpoint, is envisioned to be a clear set of tasksto be solved and proposals for action that willprovide guidance for coordinated mountainresearch around the globe. In order to pro-vide a truly global view, complementarymonitoring efforts are required in all differenttypes of mountain regions around the globeincluding polar regions, temperate zones andthe tropics, coastal regions and dry continen-tal interiors. PAGES has a well developedsuite of mountain research projects recon-structing both climate and ecosystem changealong altitudinal gradients spanning each ofthe PEP transects. Participating in this ongo-ing mountain research coordination effortcould provide a mechanism for comparisonamongst all of the latitudinal PEP transectsalong a “vertical transect.” In addition,PAGES input into any new climate and eco-system monitoring efforts which may ariseout of this initiative could ensure that presentday monitoring complements, both geo-graphically and thematically, ongoing effortsin paleoreconstruction.

Any PAGES scientists interested in takingthe lead in formulating potential PAGESparticipation in this project should contactKeith Alverson at the pages IPO (contact be-low). Further information and copies of theEuropean Conference report on Global Chan-ge in the Mountains are available from Mar-tin Price (martin.price@ecu.ox.ac.uk) Copiesof IGBP report 43 are available on requestfrom the IGBP secretariat (http://www.igbp.kva.se/). Further information on the po-tential intercore project mountain initiativecan be obtained from Harald Bugman(bugmann@ucar.edu) or Alfred Becker(becker@pik-potsdam.de).

KEITH ALVERSON

PAGES IPO, alverson@pages.unibe.ch

Fig. 13: Archive site locations for the “Changes inthe Geosphere-Biosphere during the last 15,000years” project.

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community’s efforts toward ongoing or newlyemerging international efforts, such as the EarthSystem History’s (ESH) annual records of tropi-cal systems (ARTS), reconstruction of the cli-mate of the 19th century and/or 18th centuries,and natural hazards reduction activities beingsupported under the International Decade ofNatural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) initiative.

In regards to improvements in the quantita-tive representation of climatic reconstructionsfrom historical records, major tasks would in-volve: 1) statistical characterization with refer-ence to relevant instrumental data, 2) strength-ening relationships to natural hazards research,3) the identification of key, or sensitive, regionsfrom a climatic point of view, and 4) developingappropriate methods for intercomparison withother proxy records. There are also linkage pos-sibilities to the botanical community that shouldbe explored. Through such efforts it may bepossible to identify areas or regions with highpotential for extracting climate proxies fromhistorical sources (including phenological ob-servations), where special efforts could be ap-plied to implement “observational campaigns”in order to extract the information and make ituseful for climate researchers worldwide.

There are a number of areas where opportu-nities for interdisciplinary research on climateand societal impacts exist at present. For manyreasons research on climatic reconstruction fromhistorical documentary records has been verypoorly supported in the United States in the pastcouple of decades. While much greater scholar-ship in this area has been evident in Europe andparts of Asia, partly for obvious “historical rea-sons”, as a whole, the discipline is in dire needof an infusion of fresh talent and fresh ideas. Itis hoped that this workshop will serve not onlyto advance the study of climatic variability ingeneral, but also to spur an interest in the studyof historical climate reconstruction.

AcknowledgmentsThe workshop on “Calibration of Historical

Data for Reconstruction of Climate Variations”was supported by the U.S. National ScienceFoundation, the U.S. National Oceanic and At-mospheric Administration’s Office of GlobalPrograms and the IGBP/PAGES InternationalProject Office in Bern, Switzerland. Local sup-port was provided by the University ofBarcelona, the Catalán Meteorological Serviceand the Diputació de Barcelona, which gra-ciously provided meeting facilities. The orga-nizers gratefully acknowledge their support.

HENRY F. DIAZ

Climate Diagnostics Center, NOAA/ERL, 325Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303, USAhfd@cdc.noaa.govRAYMOND S. BRADLEYDepartment of Geosciences, University ofMassachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USArbradley@geo.umass.edu

WORKSHOP REPORTS

struction; i.e., the participants considered theissue of large-scale versus regional representa-tiveness of the reconstructions.

Methodological issues were an importantconcern of this meeting, and considerable atten-tion was paid to discussing the capabilities as-sociated with various proxies for climate recon-struction. For example, DE sources from placesin Europe and the Americas contain daily nar-rative records of temperature and precipitationfrom which it is possible to develop dryness andwetness indices with reasonable quantitativevalidity back to the 1600’s, and in some regions,prior to that time. Other proxies are associatedwith economic (e.g., agricultural) activities,highly sensitive to seasonal and intraseasonalclimatic variability. Other DE records containdetailed references to floods, hail, gales, tropicalcyclone landfall, etc., from which long-term fre-quency changes of various types of climaticsynoptic events could be derived.

A major impetus for these discussions wasthe recognized need to develop quantitative cli-matic indices from DE (and other proxyrecords) that would be readily interpretableoutside of the immediate discipline of historicalanalysis of climate-related documentaryrecords. It was agreed that a common math-ematical language needed to be applied to allclimatic reconstruction work, in order for the re-sults to be readily comparable in other climaticreconstruction contexts, and enhance its useful-ness to the broader climate research community.Initital emphasis is for reconstructing tempera-ture and precipitation on monthly, seasonal andannual time scales. Selected high quality dailyproxy records are acknowledged to be very use-ful, but they are fewer in number, not generallycontinuous for more than 2 or 3 decades, andrequire considerable researcher effort to convertinto valid quantitative climatic indices. A con-sensus emerged on developing a standard unitindex (-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3) for monthly tempera-ture and precipitation anomalies, correspond-ing to categories of extreme, much below/muchabove, above/below, and near normal condi-tions. These indices could then be aggregatedinto lower temporal resolution indicators (sea-sonal, annual) through summation or averagingof individual monthly indices.

Some of the difficulties inherent in thetransformation of qualitative observations ofweather and climate phenomena to quantitativeindices of these variables were discussed.Among these are the credibility of the historical(DE) records and the subjective nature of boththe observations and their interpretation, andquestions regarding the homogeneity of histori-cal series (non-continuous records, biases to-ward recording of outstanding values, changingbiases as to what normal or abnormal weatherconditions may have been, etc.). Means to stan-dardize the information published by research-

ers in different places and using somewhat dif-ferent translation systems (i.e., calibration tech-niques) were discussed. In particular, the consis-tent choice of a normal reference period wasacknowledged to be of critical importance forcomparison of DE-derived climatic indicesacross space and time. One suggestion is that cli-matic indices of deviations from a standard ref-erence period (say, 1901-60) be produced forintercomparisons with other proxy sources. Alsosuggested was the development of indices of ex-treme event occurrences. These could be talliesof particular unusual phenomena occurringthrough time, or based on the exceedance of cer-tain threshold values in the data record.

The question of what climatic signal is beingreconstructed was also discussed. That is, whatfrequency band—interannual, decadal, centen-nial—is being more accurately reproduced inthe reconstruction. Also, an effort is needed todevelop meaningful confidence intervals for thereconstructed climatic indices, similar to whatis routinely done with tree-ring reconstructions.Other discussions centered on development ofgood regional reconstructions, using both single(DE) proxy records and multiple or weightedindices utilizing a mix of proxy data sources.

It was agreed that research into climate re-construction from historical records would ben-efit from a general focus into issues of impor-tance to international scientific programs, suchas CLIVAR, and PAGES. In particular, questionsrelated to the impact on climate from large vol-canic eruptions, solar variability, El Niño-South-ern Oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic Os-cillation (NAO) and greenhouse gas forcing ofclimate change should be a focus of much of thistype of research. As noted above, cross-checkingof DE reconstructions with other proxy recordsis likely to improve the accuracy and interpre-tation of both types of records. Much more ef-fort is needed to improve the calibration andvalidation of the DE-derived climate recon-structions.

To help the process of calibration, validationand verification of DE climatic reconstructions,the following procedures were suggested thatlargely follow the standard procedures beingused today for climatic reconstruction usinghigh resolution proxy records, such as treerings, ice cores, and varved sediments. Thesteps are: 1) calibration and validation of indexvalues, 2) context setting by comparison of lo-cal signal with regional, and large-scale indices,3) connecting the signal to known forcing peri-ods (volcanoes, ENSO, etc.), and 4) synthesis ofindividual reconstructions into a hemisphericor globally coherent picture.

RecommendationsA number of suggestions were made to ad-

vance the level of scholarship and the scientificutility of climatic reconstructions from histori-cal records. One recommendation is to focus the

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Global Climate Change and the South African Flora: Past, Present and FutureThe National Botanical Institute, Kirsten-

bosch, in conjunction with the University ofCape Town, Botany Department are undertak-ing the biodiversity component of the SouthAfrican Country Study on Climate Change(SACSCC) project. The specific objective of theproject is to provide future plant diversity sce-narios given changes in climate, combinedwith UV-B flux and atmospheric CO2 changes.The question of biodiversity is highly relevantto South Africa, due to its extremely rich,unique flora with high levels of endemism. Forexample, the Cape Floral Kingdom (CFK) isthe smallest floral kingdom in the world, cov-ering approximately 90,000 square kilometers,with approximately 8,600 species of plants. Ofthese plants 5,800 are endemic to the CFK.Four fifths of the CFK is composed of theworld famous Cape Fynbos vegetation (Fig.14). This vegetation type is characterized byfour growth forms: tall protea shrubs(proteoids); heath like shrubs (ericoids); reed-like plants (restioids); and bulbous herbs (geo-phytes). Adjacent to the Cape Floral Kingdomis the Succulent Karoo Biome, which is hometo almost 60% of the world’s succulent flora(Cowling and Richardson 1995). Assessing theeffects of future global warming on the flora ofSouth Africa is thus an important task in lightof the high plant diversity in the region.

As part of this study, a database of all thepaleobotanical information (predominantly

pollen and charcoal remains) since the last gla-cial maximum (18k BP) available for SouthAfrica is being compiled. Unfortunately, thepaleobotanical legacy in this region is poor,unlike the northern hemisphere where condi-tions associated with glacier retreat have al-lowed good estimation of vegetation move-ment. We have recorded the taxa present atapproximately 30 sites in South Africa at vari-ous times in the past. All the relevant literatureon past plant (Family, Genus or Species level)occurrences is being collected. A database of allthe identified plant occurrences in South Africais being compiled. We are attempting to com-pile a complete list of similar projects which arebeing conducted (Prentice 1996, Partridge et al.in prep) such as the Biome 6000 project(Prentice 1996) which aims to product a globaldata set of past vegetation for 6,000 radiocarbonyears ago, based on pollen and plant macrofos-sil records. Unlike the Biome 6000 project theinformation which we are assembling for theSACSCC project is only for South Africa. Thisinformation will allow us to assess past distri-butions of important taxa and vegetationgroupings to provide estimates of rates ofmovement in the past. The database has beenlinked to a Geographical Information System(GIS) in order to provide a visual means of dis-playing the sites and taxa. Using this programan attempt will be made to determine themovement of taxa over the past 18,000 years.

As part of this project we will also be mod-elling the future movement of plant taxa inSouth Africa based on the climatic scenarioswhich have been provided for the country. Thisis a refinement of the one step distributionchanges of previous work in South Africa (Ru-therford et al. 1995 a & b). The changes in dis-

tribution of vegetation types and some specifictaxa at selected intervals of time over the nextapproximately 50 years will be mapped in anattempt to determine how terrestrial bio-diversity will be affected by future climaticchanges. This project is novel in South Africa,incorporating past vegetation changes withfuture changes in plant distribution and assess-ing the changes in biodiversity.

J.C.N. ALLSOPPNational Botanical Institute, Private Bag x7,Claremont 7735, South Africaallsopp@nbict.nbi.ac.zaW.J. BONDDepartment of Botany, University of Cape Town,Rondebosch, South AfricaG.F. MIDGLEY AND M.C. RUTHERFORDNational Botanical Institute, Claremont, South Africa

REFERENCES:1. COWLING, R.M. AND RICHARDSON, D.M. 1995.Fynbos, South Africa’s unique floral kingdom.Fernwood Press. Singapore.2. PRENTICE, C. 1996. Biome 6000: progress andplants. IGBP Newsletter 27.3. RUTHERFORD, M.C. ET AL. 1995 A. Realised nichespaces and functional types: a framework forprediction of compositional change. Journal ofBiogeography 22: 523-531.4. RUTHERFORD, M.C. ET AL. 1995 B. Modelling survivalof plant populations with differing mobility andsensitivity to climate change over real and simulatedterrain types. In: Binning, P. et al. (eds). InternationalCongress of Modelling and Simulations Proceedings.Vol 1 pp. 94-101. The Modelling and SimulationsSociety of Australia Inc., Canberra.5. JOLLY, D. ET AL. Biome reconstruction from pollenand plant macrofossil data for Africa and theArabian Peninsula at 0 and 6 ka. In prep.6. PARTRIDGE, T.C. ET AL. Synthetic reconstructions ofsouthern African environments during the Last GlacialMaximum (21 – 18 kyr) and the Holocene altithermal(8 – 6 kyr). In prep.

AND BIODIVERSITY

Fig. 14: Fynbos with Ericaceae and Proteaceae and Restionaceae (Photo: Percy Sergeant MemorialCollection, Janet Allsopp)

PAGES Science and BiodiversityIt is difficult to define any direct contributionfrom PAGES-style paleo-science to biodiversityissues, at least in relation to terrestrial ecosys-tems, The concept is only meaningful at thebiological species (or ‘lower’) hierarchicallevel. Taxa tend to respond to environmentalchange rather individualistically and the levelof taxonomic resolution we can achieve, usingpollen analysis for example, is rarely ad-equate. At least we can contribute insight intopast variations in physico-chemical conditions;perhaps also some indication of biotic re-sponses from the recorded changes in distribu-tion of a few, possibly ‘indicative’ taxa. Thequestions then are:• if this is the most we can realistically do, is

it useful in any discourse about the mainte-nance of future biodiversity?

• if we set out with ‘biodiversity’ as a priorityissue, might we find ways of addressing itmore effectively?

The article by Allsopp et al. illustrates the wayin which the paleo-science dimensions arebeing considered within the context of one ofthe world’s richest and most fascinating regionsfrom the point of view of higher plantbiodiversity. We hope to take up the issue withregard to aquatic biodiversity in a subsequentNewsletter.

FRANK OLDFIELD

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Changes in PAGES SSC and at the Office inBernPAGES SSC welcomed three new members at the start of 1998:

Jose (Pepe) Boninsegna is a senior researcher of the National Sci-entific Council of Argentina (CONICET) based in Mendoza, Argentina.His expertise is in dendrochronology and dendroclimatology. Duringthe course of his career he has established numerous international col-laborations and has been a visiting scholar in France, The United States,and Great Britain.

Anne de Vernal is a professor in the Research Centre in IsotopeGeochemistry and Geochronology (GEOTOP) in the Earth Science De-partment at the Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada. Her re-search interests include paleoceanography, paleoclimatology, paleo-ecology and marine palynology. One major research project is thereconstruction of the paleoceanographic conditions (temperature, sa-linity, and sea ice distribution) in the northern North Atlantic oceanduring the last glacial maximum using the distribution of dinoflagel-late cysts in sediment cores.

Matti Saarnisto is currently research director of the GeologicalSurvey of Finland. His expertise is in quaternary and environmental ge-ology. He has served in several international science organizations in-cluding the IGCP (International Geological Correlation Programme)and INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) and is alsocurrently on the steering committee of the European Science Founda-tion QUEEN (Quaternary Environment of the Eurasian North) Project.

Alongsinde welcoming these new SSC members, we would like tothank the three departing members for their outstanding contributionsover the past years: Bill Ruddiman of the University of Virginia, USA,Marin Iriondo from Argentina and Eugene Vaganov, of the Institute ofForestry, Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

Cindy Jones, the publications officer responsible for the design ofPAGES workshop reports and this newsletter over the past two years,has left the PAGES office. Her fine eye for artistic design will be greatlymissed. We hope, largely by continuing to employ the formats devel-oped by Cindy, to continue to produce aesthetically, as well asinformationally, pleasing reports and newsletters.

(* indicates open meetings. All interested scientists are invited to attend)

• *September 7–11, 1998, “Climate and History: Past andPrsent Variability–A Context for the Future” Norwich, UKContact: Susan Boland, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia,Norwich, NRA 7TJ, EnglandTel: +44 1603 456161, Fax: +44 1603 507784s.boland@uea.ac.uk; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/conf/

• * September 29-30, 1998, “Quaternary volcanism, climateand society: forcings and feedbacks” Cambridge, UKContact: David Pyle, University of Cambridge, Department of EarthSciences, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, EnglandFax: +44 1223 333 450dmp11@cam.ac.uk; http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/QV.html

• October 10-11, 1998, "PEP3 African Crater LakesWorkshop" Gent, Belgium (this workshop is invitation only)Contact: Dirk Verschuren, Department of Biology, University of Gent,K.L.Ledegankstraat 35, B-9000 Gent, BELGIUM; Tel: 32-9-2645262;Fax: 32-9-2645343; dirk.verschuren@rug.ac.be

• *October 26-30, 1998, “3rd Annual Conference of theInternational Geological Correlation Programme Project 396:Continental Shelves in the Quaternary” Goa, India.Contacts: Dr M. Veerayya and Mr K.H. Vora, National Institue ofOceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, India; Fax: 91(0) 0832 223340 /239102; Tel: 221322 / 226253; veerayya@csnio.ren.nic.in orveerayya@darya.nio.org; vora@csnio.ren.nic.in or vora@darya.nio.orghttp://www2.env.uea.ac.uk/gmmc/igcp/goa/igcp98.html

• *December 1-4, 1998 “WMO/IOC/ICSU Conference on theWCRP ClimateVariability and Predictability Study (CLIVAR)”Paris, France.Contact: CLIVAR Conference Secretariat c/o Max Planck Institut fürMeteorologie, Bundesstr. 55, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany,Tel: +49 40 41173 412; Fax: +49 40 41173 413;clivar@clivar.dkrz.de; http://www.dkrz.de/clivar/hp.html

• January 26-28, 1999 “Marine Environment, the Past,Present and Future”. Kaohsiung, Taiwan.Contact: Chen-Tung Arthur Chen, Institute of Marine Geology andChemistry, National Sun Yat-Sen University. Kaohsiung, Taiwan;Tel: +886-7-525 5146; Fax: +886-7-525 5346;ctchen@cc.nsysu.edu.tw

• May 6-14, 1999 “IGBP Congress (with PAGES ScientificSteering Committee Meeting)” Yokahama, Japan.IGBP Contact: IGBP Secretariat, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,Lilla Frescativägen 4, Box 50005, S-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden;Tel: +46 8 16 64 48; Fax: +46 8 16 64 05; sec@igbp.kva.sePAGES Contact: Frank Oldfield, PAGES IPO, Bärenplatz 2, 3011 Bern,Switzerland; Tel: +41 31 312 31 33; Fax: +41 31 312 31 68oldfield@pages.unibe.ch; http://www.pages.unibe.ch/

• *August 3-11, 1999, “The Environmental Background toHominid Evolution in Africa - INQUA XV InternationalCongress”, Durban, South Africa.Contact: Dr D.M. Avery - Secretary General, South African Museum,P.O. Box 61, Cape Town 8000, South Africa;Tel: +27-21-243330; Fax: +27-21-2467;mavery@samuseum.ac.za; http://INQUA.geoscience.org.za/

• *November 15-19, 1999, “International Symposium onMultifaceted Aspects of Tree Ring Analysis” Lucknow, India.Contact: Dr. Amalava Bhattacharyya, Birbal Sahni Institute ofPalaeobotany, 53 University Road, Lucknow 226 007, India;Tel: 91-0522-333620; Fax: 91-0522-381948bsip@bsip.sirnetd.ernet.in

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START Young Scientist Awards to Daniel Olagoand Nathsuda PumijumnongTwo of the recently announced 1998 START Young Scientist Awardswere made to paleoscientists from within the PAGES community.Daniel Olago of the University of Nairobi was recognized for his re-cent paper on long-term temporal characteristics of paleomonsoondynamics in equatorial Africa based on a continuous sediment coresequence from Sacred Lake on the slopes of Mount Kenya. In thestudy, Olago et al. use mineral magnetics and stable carbon isotopesas proxies to demonstrate strong precipitation variability at 23,000and 11,500 yr periods since the last interglacial. NathsudaPumijumnong was cited for her tree ring research on teak (Tectonagrandis) in northern Thailand. Tree growth was shown to be con-trolled primarily by rainfall from April to June, demonstrating thatthese trees may provide a promising new proxy for climatic recon-struction in this area for at least the past 3 centuries.The START Young Scientist Awards program was initiated to recog-nize the achievements of outstanding young scientists from develop-ing countries in Asia and Africa. Recipients receive a prize in theamount of $1,000 and a certificate of award.