Biomization and quantitative climate reconstruction techniques in northwestern Mexico - With an application to four Holocene pollen sequences

International audience

English. New palcovegetation and paleoclimatic reconstructions from the Sierra Madre Occidental (SMO) in northwestern Mexico are presented. This work involves climate and biome reconstruction using Plant Functional Types (PFT) assigned to pollen taxa. We used fossil pollen data from four Holocene peat bogs located at different altitudes (15002000 m) at the border region of Sonora and Chihuahua at around 28 degrees N latitude (Ortega-Rosas, C.I. 2003. Palinologia de la Cienega de Camilo: datos para la historia de la vegetacion y el clima del Holoceno medio y superior en el NW de la Sierra Madre Occidental, Sonora, Mexico. Master Thesis, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico, D.F.; Ortega-Rosas, C.I., Pefialba, M.C., Guiot, J. Holocene altitudinal shifts in vegetation belts and environmental changes in the Sierra Madre Occidental, Northwestern Mexico. Submitted for publication of Palaeobotany and Palynology). The closest modern pollen data come from pollen analysis across an altitudinal transect from the Sonoran Desert towards the highlands of the temperate SMO at the same latitude (Ortega-Rosas, C.I. 2003. Palinologia de la Cienega de Camilo: datos para la historia de la vegetacion y el clima, del Holoceno medio y superior en el NW de la Sierra Madre Occidental, Sonora, Mexico. Master Thesis, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de M6xico, M6xico D.F.). An additional modem pollen dataset of 400 sites across NW Mexico and the SW United States was compiled from different sources (Davis, O.K., 1995. Climate and vegetation pattern in surface samples from and western U.S.A.: application to Holocene climatic reconstruction. Palynology 19, 95-119, North American Pollen Database, Latin-American Pollen Database, personal data, and different scientific papers). For the biontization method (Prentice, I.C., Guiot, J., Huntley, B., Jolly, D., Cheddadi, R., 1996. Reconstructing biomes from paleoecological data: a general method and its application to European pollen data at 0 and 6 ka. Climate Dynamics 12, 185-194), we modified the pollen-PFT and PFT-biomes assignation of Thompson and Anderson (Thompson, R.S., Anderson, K.H., 2000. Biomes of western North America at 18,000; 6000 and 0 14C yr BP reconstructed from pollen and packrat midden data. Journal of Biogeography 27, 555-584) for a better representation of the modem vegetation of NW Mexico. The biome reconstruction method was validated with the modem pollen sites and applied to the fossil sites. Our results show that, during the early Holocene, a cool conifer forest extended at least down to 1700 m, while today this biome is present above 2000 m in the Chihuahua state. The Younger Dryas event was recorded in one site with cold and dry conditions. The reconstructed annual temperature for this period was 3 degrees-6 degrees C colder than today, and annual precipitation was 250 mm lower than at present (900 mm/yr). The middle Holocene after 9200 cal yr BP was marked by a warming trend, reaching temperatures 2 degrees C warmer than today at 7000 cal yr BP, and by the installation of a warm mixed forest, the present day biome, at 1700 m elevation, while at higher elevations (1900 m) the cool conifer forest was still present. Summer precipitation was 200 mm/yr above the early Holocene values, suggesting that monsoon-like conditions strengthened since 9200 cal yr BP at this region. During the last 4000 yr, the same warm mixed forest was reconstructed below 1700 m and a conifer forest above 1700 m. A great variability of vegetation and climate patterns was recorded for the last 3000 yr particularly at high elevation sites where warming and cooling trends would be coeval of the Medieval warm period and Little Ice Age, likely related to ENSO variability. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.