Pollen stratigraphy of Late Quaternary cores from Marmara Sea: land-sea correlation and paleoclimatic history

Marine pollen analysis is an important tool for paleoclimatic reconstruction of regions like the eastern Mediterranean and Near East where few onshore sites provide long pollen records. First, a compilation was made of core-top data from the eastern Mediterranean to Black Seas to map regional variations in modern marine pollen-spore concentrations. These data show a strong link between pollen-spore concentrations and sea surface salinity, with minima of 5 grains/g in the southern Mediterranean and maxima of 160000 grains/g in the Black Sea. Despite under-representation of some forest and herbaceous vegetation indicators, e.g. Fagus and Pistacia, variations in species composition of the marine assemblages correspond closely with the distribution of regional vegetation zones and can be used as proxies for spatial differences in seasonal bind total temperature and rainfall. Pollen-spore assemblages in five cores from the Marmara Sea with multiple ages ranging from 33550 to 1990 yr BP and one Holocene core from southeastern Black Sea were used to compile a Late Quaternary marine pollen stratigraphy. These data were then compared with eastern Mediterranean onshore reference sites in order to reconstruct a vegetation and paleoclimate history for the Black Sea-Aegean corridor from the Pleniglacial interval to present. Five marine pollen zones are recognized. PZ-5 (similar to33.6-24 ka) corresponds to the late Wurm Pleniglacial; PZ-4 (similar to24-13 ka) spans the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM); PZ-3 (similar to 13-10.2 ka) includes the Allerod-Younger Dryas glacial-interglacial transition; PZ-2 (10.2-4 ka) marks the early Holocene interglacial warm, wet interval; and PZ-1 covers the latest Holocene colonization phase, which may also have been cooler and drier. Using the steppe-forest index of Traverse (1975), it is shown that the only intervals of severely dry conditions occurred briefly during the LGM and its transition; during most of the Pleniglacial and all of the Postglacial time, precipitation versus evaporation rates were sufficiently high to permit persistence of oro-Mediterranean forest vegetation. Furthermore, there is no evidence for environmental conditions in the Black Sea-Marmara region that would have encouraged pastoral or agricultural settlement in the littoral region prior to the Bronze Age, commencing 4600 years ago. Crown Copyright (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.