View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archive Ouverte en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication Terrestrial plant microfossils in palaeoenvironmental studies, pollen, microcharcoal and phytolith. Towards a comprehensive understanding of vegetation, fire and climate changes over the past one million years Anne-Laure Daniau, Stéphanie Desprat, Julie Aleman, Laurent Bremond, Basil Davis, William Fletcher, Jennifer Marlon, Laurent Marquer, Vincent Montade, César Morales-Molino, et al. To cite this version: Anne-Laure Daniau, Stéphanie Desprat, Julie Aleman, Laurent Bremond, Basil Davis, et al.. Terres- trial plant microfossils in palaeoenvironmental studies, pollen, microcharcoal and phytolith. Towards a comprehensive understanding of vegetation, fire and climate changes over the past one million years. Revue de Micropaléontologie, Elsevier Masson, 2019, 63, pp.1-35. 10.1016/j.revmic.2019.02.001. hal-02322171 HAL Id: hal-02322171 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02322171 Submitted on 22 Oct 2019 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. Title Terrestrial plant microfossils in palaeoenvironmental studies, pollen, microcharcoal and phytolith. Towards a comprehensive understanding of vegetation, fire and climate changes over the past one million years. Authors Anne-Laure Daniau1*, Stéphanie Desprat2, 3, Julie C. Aleman4,5, Laurent Bremond2,6, Basil Davis7, William Fletcher8, Jennifer R. Marlon9, Laurent Marquer10, Vincent Montade11, César Morales-Molino12, Filipa Naughton13, 14, Damien Rius15, Dunia H. Urrego16 Equal contribution: Anne-Laure Daniau, Stéphanie Desprat *Corresponding author: [email protected] Affiliations 1. Université de Bordeaux, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Environnements et Paléoenvironnements Océaniques et Continentaux (EPOC), Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 5805, F-33615 Pessac, France 2. École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), PSL Research University, Paris, France 3. EPOC UMR 5805, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France 4. Département de Géographie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville Montréal (Qc) H3C 3J7 Canada, 5. Laboratoire de Foresterie des Régions tropicales et subtropicales, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Université de Liège, Passage des Déportés 2, B-5030 Gembloux, Belgique 1 6. Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution - Montpellier, UMR 5554 CNRS-IRD-Université Montpellier-EPHE, Montpellier, France 7. Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics IDYST, Faculté des Géosciences et l’Environnement, University of Lausanne, Batiment Géopolis, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland 8. Department of Geography, School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK 9. School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511 USA 10. Research Group for Terrestrial Palaeoclimates, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Hahn- Meitner-Weg 1, 55128 Mainz (Germany) 11. University of Goettingen - Department of Palynology and Climate Dynamics - Albrecht- von-Haller Institute for Plant Sciences, Wilhelm-Weber-Str. 2a, 37073 Goettingen, Germany 12. Institute of Plant Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, CH-3013, Bern, Switzerland 13. Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute (IPMA), Rua Alfredo Magalhães Ramalho 6, 1495-006 Lisboa, Portugal 14. Center of Marine Sciences (CCMAR), Algarve University, Campus de Gambelas 8005 - 139 Faro, Portugal 15. Université de Franche-Comté, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement, Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 6249, 16 route de Gray, 25030 Besançon Cedex, France 16. Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Amory Building B302, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ, United Kingdom 2 Type of article Invited review To be submitted to: Revue de Micropaléontologie - Special issue numéro 60 ème anniversaire Keywords : Pollen; microcharcoal; phytolith; terrestrial and marine sedimentary archives; vegetation; fire; Middle Pleistocene; last glacial period; Holocene Abstract The Earth has experienced large changes in global and regional climates over the past one million years. Understanding processes and feedbacks that control those past environmental changes is of great interest for better understanding the nature, direction and magnitude of current climate change, its effect on life, and on the physical, biological and chemical processes and ecosystem services important for human well-being. Microfossils from terrestrial plants -- pollen, microcharcoal and phytoliths -- preserved in terrestrial and marine sedimentary archives are particularly useful tools to document changes in vegetation, fire and land climate. They are well preserved in a variety of depositional environments and provide quantitative reconstructions of past land cover and climate. Those microfossil data are widely available from public archives, and their spatial coverage includes almost all regions on Earth, including both high and low latitudes and altitudes. Here, we i) review the laboratory procedures used to extract those microfossils from sediment for microscopic observations and the qualitative and quantitative information they provide, ii) highlight the importance of regional and global databases for large-scale syntheses of environmental changes, and iii) 3 review the application of terrestrial plant microfossil records in palaeoclimatology and palaeoecology using key examples from specific regions and past periods. 1. Introduction The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to provide an assessment of the understanding of all aspects of any climate change over time, whether driven by natural variability or by human activity IPCC (2001). Thirty years later, the scientific consensus is that current climate change, an average global warming, is anthropogenically-driven, rapid and of large magnitude. The human population’s daily life is already or will be imminently affected and “climate action” is now targeted as one of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. Over the last decades our perception of our environment radically changed. The curiosity of scientists observing and trying to understand past climate variability has enabled contextualization of the current climate change within a long-term perspective. Over geological timescales, the Earth experienced large changes in global and regional climates. Multi-millennial time scale changes in orbital and greenhouse gas forcings during the Quaternary, for example, have produced several glacial and interglacial periods of different length and magnitudes (Hays et al., 1976; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010; Milankovitch, 1941; Past Interglacials Working Group of PAGES, 2016; Yin and Berger, 2012). The current interglacial period, the Holocene, is part of the 100-ky world established since the Middle Pleistocene transition (1.25-0.7 Ma) and characterized by large amplitude glacial-interglacial oscillations occurring with a periodicity of 100 kyr (Clark et al., 2006). The Earth’s climate also experienced decadal to millennial-scale variability (e.g. Fleitmann et al., 2009; Johnsen et 4 al., 1992; Jouzel et al., 2007; Loulergue et al., 2008; McManus et al., 1999; Sánchez Goñi et al., 1999). Observing, modeling, and understanding processes and feedbacks that control those past climate changes are of critical importance for a better understanding of the nature, direction and magnitude of current climate change, its effect on life, and on the physical, biological, and chemical processes and ecosystem services essential for human well-being. Climate on Earth is conceptualized as a system where different spheres, i.e. the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, respond to external forcings, such as astronomical and anthropogenic forcing (Ruddiman, 2001). The anthroposphere is sometimes considered as a sphere of the climate system, and not as an external forcing (Cornell et al., 2012). The different spheres interact and depend on one another as an interconnected Earth system. Palaeoclimate studies not only aim at reconstructing the response of the atmosphere, but also of all different spheres as well as their interactions and related feedback mechanisms modulating climate changes. Climate models are necessarily now designed to include interactive coupled components that extend to all of these aspects of the Earth system. Vegetation, which is a major element of the biosphere, develops in response to climate and soil characteristics and plays an important role in the climate system. It is involved in vital ecosystem services such as nutrient and food production, mitigation of climate change, and soil and fresh water production and conservation (Faucon et al., 2017). Terrestrial plants act as a carbon sink and can limit