Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Can pollution bias peatland palaeoclimate reconstruction?

Creator	Payne, R.J. Mitchell, E.A.D. Hung Nguyen-Viet Gilbert, D.

Subject	ENVIRONMENT

Description	Peatland testate amoebae are widely used to reconstruct paleohydrological/climatic changes, but many species are also known to respond to pollutants. Peatlands around the world have been exposed to anthropogenic and intermittent natural pollution through the late Holocene. This raises the question: can pollution lead to changes in the testate amoeba paleoecological record that could be erroneously interpreted as a climatic change? To address this issue we applied testate amoeba transfer functions to the results of experiments adding pollutants (N, P, S, Pb, O3) to peatlands and similar ecosystems. We found a significant effect in only one case, an experiment in which N and P were added, suggesting that pollution-induced biases are limited. However, we caution researchers to be aware of this possibility when interpreting paleoecological records. Studies characterising the paleoecological response to pollution allow pollution impacts to be tracked and distinguished from climate change. Peer Review

Date	2012-10-29T20:05:49Z 2012-10-29T20:05:49Z 2012-09-15

Type	Journal Article

Identifier	Payne, R.J., Mitchell, E.A.D., Hung Nguyen-Viet and Gilbert, D. 2012. Can pollution bias peatland palaeoclimate reconstruction? Quaternary Research 78(2): 170-173. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/24641

Language	en

Source	Quaternary Research

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