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Climatic information from 13C in plants by combining statistical and mechanistic approaches

Institut far Geologie, Universitdt Bern, Baltzerstrasse 1, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; CEREGE, UMR-6635, Europole de I'Arbois BP80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence cdx 4, France gmenot{at}cerege.fr

Pierre-Philippe Combes

CERAS-ENPC, 48 Bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France

Stephen J. Burns

Institut far Geologie, Universitdt Bern, Baltzerstrasse 1, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

The approach commonly used to assess the potential for climate reconstruction is to use linear regressions to compare the isotopic signal stored in archives to instrumental climatic data sets. A new method is proposed that combines statistical and mechanistic approaches to extract climatic information from ¹³C records in organic matter. Both a spatial and a temporal gradient of ¹³C discrimination in a moss species commonly found in temperate and tropical peat bogs are compared to meteorological records. The relevance of fossil and modem analogues to elucidate palaeoenvironment records are tested. It was found that the magnitude and, in some cases, the direction of the impact of temperature, humidity and CO₂ atmospheric concentration on 13C discrimination depend on the calibration set considered. The use of a mechanistic model is shown to help greatly in specifying the joint influence of the climatic variables.

Key Words: Carbon isotopes • plant organic matter • Sphagnum species • modem analogue • climate reconstruction • statistical and mechanistic approache

The Holocene, Vol. 14, No. 6, 931-939 (2004)
DOI: 10.1191/0959683604hl771rp


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