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A combined biogeochemical and paleobotanical approach to study permafrost environments and past dynamics.

Ronkainen, T. and Väliranta, M. and McClymont, E.L. and Biasi, C. and Salonen, S. and Fontana, S. and Tuittila, E.-S. (2015) 'A combined biogeochemical and paleobotanical approach to study permafrost environments and past dynamics.', Journal of quaternary science., 30 (3). pp. 189-200.

Abstract

When investigating past peatland processes and related carbon cycle dynamics, it is essential to identify and separate different peat environments: bogs, fens and permafrost, and their historical plant assemblages. Bog peat layers contain relatively well-preserved plant material for palaeoecological examination, whereas fen and permafrost peats are often highly humified, which in turn constrains reconstructions of past plant assemblages. Here, we analysed the chemical composition of arctic peat plateau plants to create a local reference training-set of plant biomarkers. We then combined palaeobotanical, biogeochemical and chronological analyses to one permafrost peat sequence collected from the East European Russian tundra (67°03′N, 62°57′E) to investigate past peatland dynamics and to evaluate the performance of the biomarker method in a highly decomposed permafrost environment. The results show that the chronologically constrained macrofossil analysis provided most of the essential information about the peatland succession. However, a more robust reconstruction of the past peatland dynamics was achieved by combining palaeobotanical and biogeochemical data sets. The similarity of the lipid biomarker distributions of the arctic and boreal peatland plants also implies that any established modern biomarker training-set of peatland plants could be applied universally to palaeoecological studies on peat sediments.

Item Type:Article
Keywords:Biomarker, Fen, Macrofossil, n-alkane, Peat plateau, Permafrost.
Full text:(AM) Accepted Manuscript
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Status:Peer-reviewed
Publisher Web site:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2763
Publisher statement:This is the accepted version of the following article: Ronkainen, T., Väliranta, M., McClymont, E.L., Biasi, C., Salonen, S., Fontana, S. & Tuittila, E.-S. (2015), A combined biogeochemical and palaeobotanical approach to study permafrost environments and past dynamics. Journal of Quaternary Science, 30(3): 189-200, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2763. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Date accepted:23 December 2014
Date deposited:10 March 2015
Date of first online publication:23 April 2015
Date first made open access:23 April 2016

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