A pollen rain-vegetation study along a 3600 m mountain-desert transect in the Irano-Turanian region; implications for the reliability of some pollen ratios as moisture indicators Mehdi Dehghani, Morteza Djamali, Emmanuel Gandouin, Hossein Akhani To cite this version: Mehdi Dehghani, Morteza Djamali, Emmanuel Gandouin, Hossein Akhani. A pollen rain-vegetation study along a 3600 m mountain-desert transect in the Irano-Turanian region; implications for the reliability of some pollen ratios as moisture indicators. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, Elsevier, 2017, 247, pp.133-148. 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2017.08.004. hal-01681604 HAL Id: hal-01681604 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01681604 Submitted on 20 Apr 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. A pollen rain-vegetation study along a 3600 m mountain-desert transect in the Irano-Turanian region; implications for the reliability of some pollen ratios as moisture indicators a b b a, Mehdi Dehghani , Morteza Djamali , Emmanuel Gandouin , Hossein Akhani a Halophytes and C 4 Plants Research Laboratory, Department of Plant Sciences, School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, 14155-6455 Tehran, Iran b Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie (IMBE), Aix-Marseille Univ, Avignon Université, CNRS, IRD, Technopôle Arbois Méditerranée, Bât. Villemin - BP 80, F-13545, Aix-en-Provence Cedex 04, France c Keywords: Abstract A set of 42 modern pollen samples has been investigated to determine the relationship between pollen percent-ages and vegetation composition along a 3600 m elevational mountain-desert transect in central Iran. The studied transect shows three Chenopodiaceae /Artemisia main vegetation groups including a “high altitude zone ” (embracing subnival, alpine and montane subzones), a “xerophytic pollen ratio Desert steppe, desert steppe zone ”, and a “halophytic zone ”, correlated with the groups de fi ned in Correspondence Analysis (CA) of Iranian fl ora, Montane steppes, vegetation dataset and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of pollen dataset. The subnival subzone is characterized by high Pollen assemblage, Vegetation values of Asteraceae, Brassicaceae and Cyperaceae pollen, while alpine and montane subzones are characterized by the highest pollen diversity with a predominance of grass pollen along the whole transect. The halophytic zone is dominated by Chenopodiaceae pollen while xerophytic desert steppe shows a high occurrence of Artemisia pollen. The comparison of pollen percentages with the corresponding vegetation plots shows a high congruency between pollen and vegetation compositions of alpine subzone and undisturbed xerophytic desert steppe but a weak correlation between those of the subnival and montane subzones and human affected xerophytic desert steppe. In addition, pollen representation of frequently encountered or important plant taxa in the Irano-Turanian region is provided. The widely used Chenopodiaceae/ Artemisia = C/A pollen ratio, as an aridity index, is shown to be unreliable in the Irano-Turanian steppes. Our results suggest that a combined graph of all four indices (C/A pollen ratio, Poaceae/ Artemisia = P/A, Poaceae/ Chenopodiaceae = P/C and (A + C)/P ratios) can represent the vegetation and climate relationships more accurately. In conclusion, surface pollen composition can re fl ect the actual vegetation zones/subzones in Irano-Turanian steppes. Together, P/A and P/C ratios are more con fi dent to differentiate mesic from arid steppes, while C/A and (A + C)/P ratios provide a useful tool to differentiate halophytic desert vegetation developed in endorheic depressions with saline soils from xerophytic desert steppe developed in well-drained soils. 1. Introduction In Iran, only four studies on modern pollen vegetation calibration have been published, two in the Euro-Siberian and two in the Irano-Turanian A reliable regional calibration scheme of different plant taxa contributing fl oristic regions. In the Euro-Siberian fl oristic region in northern Iran, in modern pollen assemblages is essential to correctly interpret fossil pollen comparison of surface pollen percentages with vegetation composition along spectra. In spite of expanding fossil pollen studies in the Middle Eastern a forest steppe transect in Golestan National Park in north-eastern Iran using countries since sixties ( Wright, 1961; Van Zeist, 1967; Van Zeist and descriptive and numerical approaches, helps to distinguish different Bottema, 1977; El-Moslimany, 1983; Bottema, 1986; Bottema and Woldring, vegetation types, with the worst correspondence found in transitional zones or 1990; Tzedakis, 1994; Ramezani et al., 2008; Djamali et al., 2008, 2009b, ecotones ( Djamali et al., 2009a ). Ramezani et al. (2013) studied a 20 km long 2016 ), modern surface pollen studies are quite scarce in the region ( Wright et altitudinal transect in the South Caspian region which included only forest al., 1967; El-Moslimany, 1990; Davies and Fall, 2001 ). communities, providing some data on pollen production and dispersal of common place trees in central Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran. In the Irano-Turanian region a set of sixty samples along four transects in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran was studied by Wright et al. (1967) . Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Akhani). This was a fi rst attempt to interpret the fossil pollen data 1 obtained from a few sediment cores from lakes Zaribar (also Zeribar) and East and also the highest volcano in Asia separating interior Iranian deserts Mirabad. They found that pollen rain assemblages taken from Mesopotamian from the Caspian Sea. Alborz Mountain Range, 650 km long, separates the steppes and piedmont pseudo-savannas contained high amounts of Plantago south Caspian lowland (down to 26 m below sea level) with montane pollen, while those of oak woodlands and plateau steppes were characterized temperate deciduous forests on the northern fl anks ( Akhani et al., 2010 ) from by high percentages of Quercus, and Artemisia , and chenopod pollen, Irano-Turanian mountain steppes on the southern fl anks ( Akhani et al., 2013 ). respectively. However, their study suffered from two main limitations The central Iranian plateau contains the Kavir National Park/Kavir Protected including lacking of numerical analysis and poor fl oristic data which was Area with a surface area of 670,000 ha, located in the eastern edge of the Salt available at that time. Another study was done 15 years later in an arid region Playa Lake, which has been protected since 1964 ( Rechinger and Wendelbo, in northeastern corner of Central Iran, as a complementary study to 1976; Firouz, 1976 ). About 75% of this area which is part of an elevated palynological investigation of a late Holocene alluvial sediment core by plateau of 650 to 850 m a.s.l., is almost equally composed of inter fi ngering Moore and Stevensen (1982) . They distinguished fi ve vegetation types on peneplain surface, saline soils, and salt-encrusted depressions ( Krinsley, limestone outcrops, Ephedra zone, Zygophyllum zone, saline areas and 1970 ). While the fl anks of Damavand are mainly composed of trachyandesitic disturbed areas in which 14 plots were taken subjectively, rather than a real lava fl ows and pyroclastic material with nutrient-rich soils, the Alborz transect along an ecological gradient. They showed that pollen of Artemisia Mountains are of various geological compositions from Tertiary and Chenopodiaceae dominates the pollen percentages and that C/A ratio is volcaniclastic sediments to Mesozoic limestone and marl formations ( Allen et variable in different vegetation types with the highest value in saline areas al., 2003; Davidson et al., 2004 ). with dominance of members of Chenopodiaceae. They also noted that arboral pollen is very scarce in the region with interesting presence of some tree According to regional weather stations along the selected transect (Rineh, pollen coming from south Caspian temperate forests by long distance Larijan, Abali, Damavand, Garmsar and Siah Kuh), mean annual rainfall dispersal. decreases steadily towards low elevations, ranging from 548, 538, 373, 117 to 68 mm/year respectively; while mean annual temperature increases in the Pollen ratios of Chenopodiaceae, Artemisia and Poaceae have been widely same direction from 9.89, 9, 13, 19 and 19 accordingly. The meteorological used as ecological indices in palynological studies ( El-Moslimany, 1990; Van stations along the studied transect as well as the climate diagrams showing the Campo and Gasse, 1993; Davis and Fall, 2001; Djamali et al., 2008; Zhao et length of dry and humid periods are presented in Fig. 1 . There is no al., 2008 ). The Chenopodiaceae/ Artemisia (C/A) pollen ratio as an aridity meteorological data available for high elevations of our sampling sites but index in open vegetation types ( El-Moslimany, 1990 ) has received the highest obviously the pattern of temperature and precipitation fl uctuations is attention by many authors, although its reliability