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| Titel |
Peat Bog Archives: from human history, vegetation change and Holocene climate, to atmospheric dusts and trace elements of natural and anthropogenic origin |
| VerfasserIn |
William Shotyk |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250043087
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| Zusammenfassung |
| For at least two centuries, peat has been recognized as an excellent archive of environmental
change. William Rennie (1807), for example, interpreted stratigraphic changes in Scottish
bogs not only in terms of natural changes in paleoclimate, but was also able to identify
environmental changes induced by humans, namely deforestation and the hydrological
impacts which result from such activities. The use of bogs as archives of climate change in
the early 20th century was accelerated by studies of fossil plant remains such as those by
Lewis in Scotland, and by systematic investigations of pollen grains pioneered by von Post in
Sweden. In Denmark, Glob outlined the remarkably well-preserved remains of bog bodies
and associated artefacts (of cloth, wood, ceramic and metal) in Danish bogs. In Britain,
Godwin provided an introduction to the use of bogs as archives of human history,
vegetation change, and Holocene climate, with a more recent survey provided by
Charman.
Recent decades have provided many mineralogical studies of peat and there is growing
evidence that many silicate minerals, whether derived from the surrounding watershed or the
atmosphere (soil-derived dusts and particles emitted from volcanoes), also are well preserved
in anoxic peatland waters. Similarly, geochemical studies have shown that a long list of trace
metals, of both natural and anthropogenic origin, also are remarkably well preserved in peat
bogs. Thus, there is growing evidence that ombrotrophic (ie “rain-fed”) peat bogs are reliable
archives of atmospheric deposition of a wide range of trace elements, including conservative,
lithogenic metals such as Al, Sc, Ti, Y, Zr, Hf and the REE, but also the potentially toxic
Class B, or “heavy metals” such as Cu, Ag, Hg, Pb, Sb and Tl. When high quality
measurements of these elements is combined with accurate radiometric age dating,
it becomes possible to create high resolution reconstructions of atmospheric soil
dust fluxes, ancient and modern metal pollution, and Holocene climate change. |
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