Do peatlands or lakes provide the most comprehensive distal tephra records?
Date
01/05/2016Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Despite the widespread application of tephra studies for dating and correlation of stratigraphic sequences (‘tephrochronology’), questions remain over the reliability and replicability of tephra records from lake sediments and peats, particularly in sites >1000 km from source volcanoes. To address this, we examine the tephrostratigraphy of four pairs of lake and peatland sites in close proximity to one another (<10 km), and evaluate the extent to which the microscopic (crypto-) tephra records in lakes and peatlands differ. The peatlands typically record more cryptotephra layers than nearby lakes, but cryptotephra records from high-latitude peatlands can be incomplete, possibly due to tephra fallout onto snow and subsequent redistribution across the peatland surface by wind and during snowmelt. We find no evidence for chemical alteration of glass shards in peatland or lake environments over the time scale of this study (mid-to late- Holocene). Instead, the low number of basaltic cryptotephra layers identified in distal peatlands reflects the capture of only primary tephra-fall, whereas lakes concentrate tephra falling across their catchments which subsequently washes into the lake, adding to the primary tephra fallout received in the lake. A combination of records from both lakes and peatlands must be used to establish the most comprehensive and complete regional tephrostratigraphies. We also describe two previously unreported late Holocene cryptotephras and demonstrate, for the first time, that Holocene Icelandic ash clouds frequently reached Arctic Sweden.
Citation
Watson , E J , Swindles , G T , Lawson , I T & Savov , I P 2016 , ' Do peatlands or lakes provide the most comprehensive distal tephra records? ' , Quaternary Science Reviews , vol. 139 , pp. 110-128 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.03.011
Publication
Quaternary Science Reviews
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0277-3791Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
This research was undertaken while Elizabeth Watson held a NERC-funded Doctoral Training Grant (NE/K500847/1). GTS acknowledges support from the Dutch Foundation for the Conservation of Irish Bogs. IS and EJW thank CGS for generous support of the fieldwork in Sweden.Collections
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