New insights into paleoenvironmental changes in Laguna Potrok Aike, Southern Patagonia, since the Late Pleistocene: the PASADO multiproxy record

CRISTINA RECASENS; DANIEL ARIZTEGUI; CATALINA GEBHARDT; CLAUDIA GOGORZA; TORSTEN HABERZETTL; ANNETTE HAHN; PIERRE KLIEM; AGATHE LISÉ-PRONOVOST; ANDREAS LÜCKE; NORA MAIDANA; CHRISTOPH MAYR; CHRISTIAN OHLENDORF; FRANK SCHÄBITZ; GUILLAUME ST-ONGE; MICHAEL WILLE,; BERND ZOLITSCHKA; THE PASADO SCIENCE TEAM

HOLOCENE (SEVENOAKS)

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD

Lugar: London; Año: 2012 vol. 22 p. 1323 - 1335

0959-6836

AbstractA series of long sediment cores was retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike, Southern Patagonia, within the framework of PASADO (Potrok Aike MaarLake Sediment Archive Drilling Project), an ICDP (International Continental Scientific Drilling Program) lake drilling project. This maar lake, locatedat 52°S, 70°W in the Province of Santa Cruz (Argentina), in the southernmost continental area of the world, is one of the few permanent lakes inthe region, providing a unique continuous paleoclimatic and paleoecological lacustrine record for the last glacial cycle. Previous multiproxy studiesof this site have characterized the environmental history of these dry lands in the Patagonian Steppe for the last 16 cal. ka BP. This new series ofsediment cores provides a much longer record of climate variability in Southern Patagonia since 51.3 cal. ka BP. Using a multiproxy strategy, a setof samples (mostly from core catcher material) was analyzed for physical properties, rock magnetism, geochemistry, CNS elemental analysis, stableisotopes, pollen and diatoms. This preliminary multiproxy limnogeological interpretation sheds new light on the regional Pleistocene and Holoceneenvironmental history, revealing lake-level variations through time and identifying time windows of interest where higher resolution analyses willbe carried out.