PARAD: Peat bog Records of Atmospheric Dust fluxes - Holocene palaeoenvironmental and paleoclimatic implications for Southern South America

FRANÇOIS DE VLEESCHOUWER; HELEEN VANNESTE; SÉBASTIEN BERTRAND; ANDREA CORONATO; DIEGO GAIERO; GAËL LE ROUX

Montreal

Congreso; Goldschmidt 2012; 2012

PARAD: Peat bog Records of Atmospheric Dust fluxes - Holocene palaeoenvironmental and paleoclimatic implications for Southern South America FRANÇOIS DE VLEESCHOUWER1,2*, HELEEN VANNESTE1,2, SÉBASTIEN BERTRAND3, ANDREA CORONATO4, DIEGO GAIERO5, GAËL LE ROUX1,2 AND THE PARAD TEAM MEMBERS. 1 Université de Toulouse; INP, UPS; EcoLab (Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement); ENSAT, Avenue de l’Agrobiopole, 31326 Castanet Tolosan, France (francois.devleeschouwer@ensat.fr) 2 CNRS; EcoLab; 31326 Castanet Tolosan, France 3 RCMG, Gent, Belgium, sebastien.bertrand@ugent.be 4 CADIC-CONICET, Ushuaia, Argentina, andrea.coronato@gmail.com 5 CICTERRA/CONICET, cordoba, Argentina, dgaiero@efn.uncor.edu Abstract Although peat bogs have been abundantly used to monitor past atmospheric pollution, less attention has been given to pre-anthropogenic signals, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Yet they are important to 1/ better understand the different particle sources during the Holocene and 2/ to tackle the linkage between atmospheric dust loads and climate change. In this poster, we will present the preliminary results and the main objectives of the three-year running PARAD project, which are: 1) to provide high-resolution continuous records of natural atmospheric dust using the elemental and isotopic signature of peat cores in South America, and 2) to assess the linkage between dust inputs and climate. In this project, we will explore the use of a broad range of trace elements as dust proxies (soil particles, volcanism, cosmogenic dusts, marine aerosols). Radiogenic isotopes (Pb, Nd, Hf) will be used as tracers for fingerprinting predominant sources. Coupling these findings with biological proxies (plant macrofossils, pollen, humification) and detailed age-depth modeling, we expect not only to identify and interpret new links between atmospheric dust chemistry and climate change but also to significantly improve our understanding of peat bogs as archives of climate change, and the role of dust in both palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic changes.