Showing papers in "Quaternary Science Reviews in 2015"

TL;DR: In this paper, a complete and optimized scheme of lettered marine isotope substages spanning the last 1.0 million years is proposed, based on the LR04 stack of marine benthic oxygen isotope records, and thus it is grounded in a continuous record responsive largely to changes in ice volume that are inherently global.

TL;DR: In this article, a multidisciplinary approach is proposed to establish a varve chronology, which can be applied to precisely date events like volcanic ash layers, earthquakes or human impact, as well as short and long-term climate (temperature, precipitation, wind, hydroclimatic conditions or flooding) and environmental changes (eutrophication, pollution).

TL;DR: A global overview of glacier advances and retreats (grouped by regions and by millennia) for the Holocene is compiled from previous studies as mentioned in this paper, which reconstructs of glacier fluctuations are based on mapping and dating moraines defined by 14 C, TCN, OSL, lichenometry and tree rings (discontinuous records/time series).

TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors synthesized the most up-to-date and comprehensive proxy moisture/precipitation records during the past 1000 years in China and surroundings, including 34 records from arid central Asia (ACA) and 37 records from monsoonal Asia.

TL;DR: The earliest phases of the Aurignacian complex seem to represent another modern wave of migrations, starting in the Levant area, and the expansion of this technocomplex throughout Europe completed the modern colonization of the continent.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on role of the westerly jet over Asia, namely that its latitude relative to Tibet is critical in determining the stepwise transitions in East Asian rainfall seasons, and show from observational data that the interannual co-variation of June (July-August) rainfall and upper tropospheric zonal winds show properties consistent with an altered timing of the transition to the Meiyu (Summer), and with more northward-shifted westerlies for earlier transitions.

TL;DR: In this paper, a new gridded climate reconstruction for Europe for the last 12,000 years based on pollen data is presented, which is an update of Davis et al. (2003) using the same methodology, but with a greatly expanded fossil and surface-sample dataset and more rigorous quality-control.

TL;DR: In this paper, a high-resolution palynological analysis on annually laminated sediments of Sihailongwan Maar Lake (SHL) provides new insights into the Holocene vegetation and climate dynamics of NE China.

TL;DR: A recent review of the Quaternary paleoclimate of the South American summer monsoon (SASM) domain presents viewpoints regarding a range of key issues in the field, many of which are unresolved as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: In this article, a review of changes in the Mediterranean Sea basins over the last 20 ka, using the inorganic chemistry and mineralogy of marine sediment records is presented, and uncertainties involved in using them for paleoclimate and paleoceanographic reconstructions are evaluated.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors combine proxy data and model results to evaluate the response of East Asian summer monsoon change to these forcings, and they conclude that the gradual weakening of the monsoon related to slowly decreasing summer insolation at astronomical timescales will likely be likely overwhelmed by the projected ongoing anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

TL;DR: Evaluating recent developments in the methods used to reconstruct ice sheets and outline some key challenges that remain, with an emphasis on how future work might integrate terrestrial and marine evidence together with numerical modelling.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used neodymium isotopes in detrital sediments deposited off the Channel River to provide a continuous and well-dated record for the evolution of the European Ice Sheet (EIS) southern margin through the end of the last glacial period and during the deglaciation.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace compositional changes of Nile sediments for 7400 km, from their sources in equatorial rift highlands of Burundi and Rwanda to their sink in the Mediterranean Sea.

TL;DR: In this article, evidence for climate change across the North American Monsoon (NAM) and adjacent areas is reviewed, drawing on continental and marine records and the application of climate models, and patterns of change at 12,000, 9000, 6000 and 4000 cal yr BP are presented to capture the change from the Younger Dryas (YD) and through the mid-Holocene.

TL;DR: In this article, a large number of radiocarbon ages between 30 and 10 cala for samples collected from outcrops and shorelines from the Lake Bonneville basin have been compiled.

TL;DR: In this paper, the carbon isotope (δ 13 C), total organic carbon (TOC) and pollen analysis were carried out from a peat-lake sediment sequence developed in alpine meadows of the Chandra valley, Lahaul, NW Himalaya, in order to reconstruct centennial to millennial scale vegetational changes and Indian summer monsoon variability during the Holocene.

TL;DR: The hydromorphic regimes that underpinned Old World river-based civilizations are reviewed in light of recent research in this paper, with a focus on five identified flooding and settlement scenarios: (i) alluvial fans and aprons; (ii) laterally mobile rivers; (iii) rivers with well-developed levees and flood basins; (iv) river systems characterized by avulsions and floodouts; and (v) large river-fed wetlands.

TL;DR: In this paper, a high-resolution (subdecadal to centennial) multi-proxy reconstruction of aeolian input and changes in palaeohydrological conditions based on a 13000-Yr record from Neor Lake's peripheral peat in NW Iran is presented.

TL;DR: A review of the last decade of speleothem-related research can be found in this paper, where the authors provide a comprehensive overview of existing and new approaches using existing proxies and discuss progress in understanding kinetic isotope fractionation, which, with further advances, may help quantify paleoclimate changes despite non-equilibrium formation of specleothems.

TL;DR: Isotopic tracking showed that scimitar-tooth cats in Alaska were not specialist proboscidean predators but rather generalist consumers of other large herbivores, and wolves seem to have been outcompeted by hyenas but became dominant predators during the Lateglacial in Europe to the expense of the last cave lions.

TL;DR: The RESET project as mentioned in this paper used tephra layers to tie together and synchronise the chronologies of stratigraphic records at archaeological and environmental sites, and a chronology of the key tephras in the RESET tectra lattice in the time range 10-60

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reanalysed the data from 13 pollen sequences from the summer rainfall zone of South Africa spanning the last 45,000 years, obtaining directly comparable quantitative reconstructions of mean annual temperature and summer rainfall.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use the RESET database ( https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk ), which contains major and trace element data for a number of European silicic tephra erupted in the period 100-ka to ca-10-ka, to define new and modify existing tectonic setting discrimination diagrams for use with volcanic glass analyses.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors measured modern tidal notches in several of sites along the Mediterranean coasts and showed that notches are carved by an ensemble rather than by a single process, both today and in the past.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors synthesized the evidence for Maya impacts on climate, vegetation, hydrology and the lithosphere, from studies of soils, lakes, floodplains, wetlands and other ecosystems.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the proxies of TOC, δ13Corg, and leaf wax n-alkane values to reconstruct the lake conditions, which revealed patterns in monsoonal changes during the Holocene.

TL;DR: The analyses suggest that Neolithic people spread into a landscape that was already open, and humans probably contributed to the spread of oak, and influenced the dynamics of hazel and hornbeam.

TL;DR: In this article, a meta-analysis of published and publically available radiocarbon and OSL dated Holocene fluvial units in the Nile catchment, including the delta region, and relate this to changing climate and river dynamics.