Late Pleistocene-Holocene environments in Valle Carbajal, Fuegian Andes valleys, southern South America.

BORROMEI, A; CORONATO, A.; QUATTROCCHIO, M.; RABASSA, J.; GRILL, S.; ROIG, C.

JOURNAL OF SOUTH AMERICAN EARTH SCIENCES

Elsevier

Año: 2007 vol. 23 p. 321 - 335

0895-9811

The authors discuss Late Pleistocene-Holocene depositional environments in one of the Fuegian Andes valleys on the basis of palynological, geomorphological and sedimentological analyses from two sites located near the Beagle Channel. The results obtained at these localities reinforce and refine the Late Pleistocene-Holocene climatic pattern previously recorded here. A colder period, associated with the Younger Dryas stadial event, is suggsted by low Nothofaus pollen frequency, and communities of grass, low scrub, and shrub heat expanded into the low/middle slopes (10,310 14C yr. B.p.). By ca. 9500 14C yr. B.P, warmer and drier coniditions occurred, as evidenced by the development of open-grown vegetation in the valley floors (pollen zone O-3), followed by the expansion of open Nothofagus woodland (pollen zoneO-2) in the middle Holocene. The milder climate subsequently changed, as indicated by the spreading of the closest forest and mire (pollen zone O-1), to more humid and cooler conditions during the last ca. 5000 yr. B.P.