Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:44:34.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

39 - Pollen as Palaeoclimate Indicators in the Levant

from Part IV: - Palaeoecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The southern Levant is a laboratory for analysing climate and vegetation history based on palynology. Plant-geographical territories in this region vary due to steep precipitation gradients. The Holocene vegetation and climate history of the Levant is based on more detailed, steadily increasing palynological research. New botanical-climatological transfer functions have been applied to Golan Heights and Dead Sea pollen. Mediterranean vegetation at the Golan indicates relatively high precipitation. The Dead Sea is located at the intersection of Mediterranean, steppe and desert vegetation and its pollen proxies are sensitive to small precipitation changes.The variability in temperature and precipitation derived from the pollen are compared with lake level fluctuations of the Holocene Dead Sea. Intervals of proposed high lake stands coincide with pollen intervals indicating higher precipitation/lower temperature and vice versa This association between lake levels and pollen-derived climate patterns supports the validity of the two independent data sets.
Type
Chapter
Information
Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 337 - 346
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bar-Yosef, O. & Belfer-Cohen, A. 1992. From foraging to farming in the Mediterranean Levant. In Transition to Agriculture in Prehistory, ed. Gebauer, A.G. & Price, T.D.. Madison: Prehistory Press, pp. 2148.Google Scholar
Baruch, U. 1986. The Late Holocene vegetational history of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel. Paleorient 12: 3747.Google Scholar
Baruch, U. 1990. Palynological evidence of human impact on the vegetation as recorded in late Holocene lake sediments in Israel. In Man's Role in the Shaping of the Eastern Mediterranean Landscape, ed. Bottema, S., Entjes-Nieborg, G. & van Zeist, W.. Rotterdam: Balkema, pp. 283–93.Google Scholar
Baruch, U. & Bottema, S. 1999. A new pollen diagram from Lake Hula – vegetational, climatic and anthropogenic implications. In Ancient Lakes: Their Cultural and Biological Diversity, ed. Kawanabe, H., Coultier, G.W. & Roosevelt, A.C.. Belgium: Kenobi Productions, pp. 7586.Google Scholar
Birks, H.J.B. 1998. Numerical tools in paleolimnology – progress, potentialities and problems. Journal of Paleolimnology 20: 307–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danin, A. 1983. Desert Vegetation of Israel and Sinai. Jerusalem: Cana.Google Scholar
Danin, A. 1988. Flora and vegetation of Israel and adjacent areas. In The Zoogeography of Israel, ed. Tov, Y. Yom & Tchernov, E.. Dordrecht–Boston–Lancaster: Dr W. Junk Publishers, pp. 129–59.Google Scholar
Danin, A. & Plittmann, U. 1987. Revision of the plant geographical territories of Israel and Sinai. Plant Systematics and Evolution 156: 4353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faegri, K. & Iversen, J. 1989. Textbook of Pollen Analysis, 4th edn. Chi-chester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Feinbrun-Dothan, N. & Danin, A. 1998. Analytical Flora of Eretz Israel, 2nd edn. Jerusalem: Cana.Google Scholar
Gasse, F., Vidal, L., Deville, A.-L. & Van Campo, E. 2011. Hydrological variability in the northern Levant: A 250 ka multi-proxy record from the Yammouneh (Lebanon) sedimentary sequence. Climate of the Past 7: 1261–84.Google Scholar
Goldreich, Y. 2003. The Climate of Israel: Observation, Research and Application. London: Kluwer Academic Press.Google Scholar
Heim, C., Nowaczyk, N.R., Negendank, J.F.W., Leroy, S.A.G. & Ben-Avraham, Z. 1997. Near east desertification: Evidence from the Dead Sea. Naturwissenschaften 1984: 398401.Google Scholar
Horowitz, A. 1971. Climatic and vegetational developments in northeastern Israel during Upper Pleistocene–Holocene times. Pollen et Spores 13: 255–78.Google Scholar
Horowitz, A. 1979. The Quaternary of Israel. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, A. 1992. Palynology of Arid Lands. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Kühl, N. & Litt, T. 2003. Quantitative time series reconstruction of Eemian temperature at three European sites using pollen data. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 12: 205–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kühl, N., Gebhardt, C., Litt, T. & Hense, A. 2002. Probability density functions as botanical–climatological transfer functions for climate reconstruction. Quaternary Research 53: 381–92.Google Scholar
Kühl, N., Litt, T., Schölzel, C. & Hense, A. 2007. Eemian and Early Weichselian temperature and precipitation variability in northern Germany. Quaternary Science Reviews 26: 3311–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumke, T., Schölzel, C. & Hense, A. 2004. Transfer functions for paleoclimate reconstructions – theory and methods. In The Climate in Historical Times: Towards a Synthesis of Holocene Proxy Data and Climate Models, ed. Fischer, H., Kumke, T., Lohmann, G. et al. Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 229–44.Google Scholar
Kushnir, Y. & Stein, M. 2010. North Atlantic influence on 19th–20th century rainfall in the Dead Sea watershed, teleconnections with the Sahel, and implication for Holocene climate fluctuations. Quaternary Science Reviews 29: 3843–60.Google Scholar
Langgut, D., Neumann, F.H., Stein, M. et al. 2014. Dead Sea pollen record and history of human activity in the Judean Highlands (Israel) from the Intermediate Bronze into the Iron Ages (∼2500–500 BCE). Palynology 38: 280302.Google Scholar
Leroy, S.A.G. 2010. Pollen analysis of core DS7–1SC (Dead Sea) showing intertwined effects of climatic change and human activities in the Late Holocene. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 306–16.Google Scholar
Litt, T., Schölzel, C., Kühl, N. & Brauer, A. 2009. Vegetation and climate history in the Westeifel Volcanic Field (Germany) during the past 11 000 years based on annually laminated lacustrine maar sediments. Boreas 38: 679–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litt, T., Ohlwein, C., Neumann, F.H., Hense, A. & Stein, M. 2012. Holocene climate variability in the Levant from the Dead Sea pollen record. Quaternary Science Reviews 49: 95105.Google Scholar
Litt, T., Pickarski, N., Heumann, G., Stockhecke, M. & Tzedakis, P.C. 2014. A 600,000 year long continental pollen record from Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey). Quaternary Science Reviews 104: 3041.Google Scholar
Migowski, C., Agnon, A., Bookman, R., Negendank, J.F.W. & Stein, M. 2004. Recurrence pattern of Holocene earthquakes along the Dead Sea Transform revealed by varve-counting and radiocarbon dating of lacustrine sediments. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 222: 301–14.Google Scholar
Migowski, C., Stein, M., Prasad, S., Negendank, J.F.W. & Agnon, A. 2006. Holocene climate variability and cultural evolution in the Near East from the Dead Sea sedimentary record. Quaternary Research 66: 421–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neugebauer, I., Brauer, A., Schwab, M.J. et al. 2014. Lithology of the long sediment record recovered by the ICDP Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project (DSDDP). Quaternary Science Reviews 102: 149–65.Google Scholar
Neumann, F.H., Kagan, E.J., Schwab, M. & Stein, M. 2007a. Palynology, sedimentology and palaeoecology of the late Holocene Dead Sea. Quaternary Science Review 26: 1476–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neumann, F., Schölzel, C., Litt, T., Hense, A. & Stein, M. 2007b. Holocene vegetation and climate history of the northern Golan Heights (Near East). Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16: 329–46.Google Scholar
Neumann, F.H., Kagan, E.J., Leroy, S.A.G. & Baruch, U. 2010. Vegetation history and climate fluctuations on a transect along the Dead Sea west shore and their impact on past societies over the last 3500 years. Journal of Arid Environments 74: 756–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New, M.G., Hulme, M. & Jones, P.D. 2000. Representing twentieth-century space–time climate variability. Part II: Development of 1901–96 monthly grids of terrestrial surface climate. Journal of Climate 13: 2217–38.Google Scholar
Ohlwein, C. & Wahl, E. 2012. Review of probabilistic pollen-climate transfer methods. Quaternary Science Reviews 31: 1729.Google Scholar
Prentice, I.C. & Webb, T. 1998. BIOME 6000: Reconstructing global mid-Holocene vegetation patterns from palaeoecological records. Journal of Biogeography 25: 9971005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prentice, I.C., Guiot, J., Huntley, B., Jolly, D. & Cheddadi, R. 1996. Reconstructing biomes from palaeoecological data: A general method and its application to European pollen data at 0 and 6 ka. Climate Dynamics 12: 185–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reille, M. 1992. Pollen et spores d'Europe et d'Afrique du Nord. Marseille: Laboratoire de botanique historique et de palynologie.Google Scholar
Schiebel, V. 2013. Vegetation and Climate History of the Southern Levant During the Last 30,000 Years Based on Palynological Investigation. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Bonn University.Google Scholar
Schölzel, C., Hense, A., Hübl, P., Kühl, N. & Litt, T. 2002. Digitization and geo-referencing of botanical distribution maps. Journal of Biogeography 29: 851–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwab, M.J., Neumann, F., Litt, T., Negendank, J.F.W. & Stein, M. 2004. Holocene palaeoecology of the Golan Heights (Near East): Investigation of lacustrine sediments from Birkat Ram crater lake. Quaternary Science Reviews 23: 1723–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tzedakis, P.C. 2007. Seven ambiguities in the Mediterranean palaeoenvir-onmental narrative. Quaternary Science Reviews 26: 2042–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Zeist, W., Baruch, U. & Bottema, S. 2009. Holocene palaeoecology of the Hula Area, Northeastern Israel. In A Timeless Vale. Archaeo-logical and Related Essays on the Jordan Valley in Honor of Gerrit van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Kaptijn, W. & Lucas, P.. Archaeological Studies Leiden University 19. Leiden: Leiden University Press, pp. 2964.Google Scholar
Weinstein, M. 1976. The Late Quaternary vegetation of the Northern Golan. Pollen et Spores 18: 553–62.Google Scholar
Zohary, M. 1973. Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East, 2 vols. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag.Google Scholar
Zohary, M. 1982. Vegetation of Israel and Adjacent Areas. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe A (Naturwissenschaften) 7. Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×