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| Titel |
Investigating the potential of floating mires as record of palaeoenvironmental changes |
| VerfasserIn |
C. Zaccone, P. Adamo, S. Giordano, T. M. Miano |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2012
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 14 (2012) |
| Datensatznummer |
250071029
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Peat-forming floating mires could provide an exceptional resource for palaeoenvironmental
and environmental monitoring studies, as much of their own history, as well as the history of
their surrounds, is recorded in their peat deposits.
In his Naturalis historia (AD 77–79), Pliny the Elder described floating islands on Lake
Vadimonis (now Posta Fibreno Lake, Italy). Actually, a small floating island (ca. 35 m of
diameter and 3 m of submerged thickness) still occurs on this calcareous lake fed by karstic
springs at the base of the Apennine Mountains.
Here the southernmost Italian populations of Sphagnum palustre occur on the small
surface of this floating mire known as “La Rota”, i.e., a cup-formed core of Sphagnum peat
and rhizomes of Helophytes, erratically floating on the water-body of a submerged doline,
annexed to the easternmost edge of the lake, characterised by the extension of a large reed
bed.
Geological evidence point out the existence in the area of a large lacustrine basin since
Late Pleistocene. The progressive filling of the lake caused by changing in climatic
conditions and neotectonic events, brought about the formation of peat deposits in the area,
following different depositional cycles in a swampy environment. Then, a round-shaped
portion of fen, originated around lake margins in waterlogged areas, was somehow isolated
from the bank and started to float.
Coupling data about concentrations and fluxes of several major and trace elements of
different origin (i.e., dust particles, volcanic emissions, cosmogenic dusts and marine
aerosols), with climate records (plant micro- and macrofossils, pollens, isotopic ratios),
biomolecular records (e.g., lipids), detailed age-depth modelling (i.e., 210Pb, 137Cs, 14C), and
humification indexes, the present work is hoped to identify and better understand
the reliability of this particular “archive”, and thus possible relationships between
biogeochemical processes occurring in this floating bog and environmental changes. |
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