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Detecting climatic signals in an anthropogenically disturbed catchment: the late-Holocene record from the Petit Lac d'Annecy, French Alps

Detecting climatic signals in an anthropogenically disturbed catchment: the late-Holocene record from the Petit Lac d'Annecy, French Alps
Detecting climatic signals in an anthropogenically disturbed catchment: the late-Holocene record from the Petit Lac d'Annecy, French Alps
Historical and documentary records from the Petit Lac d’Annecy, indicate that human activities have been the dominant ‘geomorphic process’ shaping the catchment during the late Holocene, with deforestation, agriculture and artificial drainage profoundly affecting both the pace and spatial distribution of soil erosion. The impact of past climatic change on the evolution of the catchment is less certain because of the lack of long-term climate records for the site. Previous attempts to use the sediment record from the lake to investigate the role past climate change may have played were hampered by the difficulty in isolating and disentangling the climatic signal preserved within the archive, because of overprinting of human activity. This is a common problem in regions with a long history of human activity in the landscape. In this study we use a range of novel statistical techniques (including cross-correlation and cross spectral analysis) to assess the relative importance of climate in driving landscape = dynamics. The statistical analysis is carried out on an updated high-resolution palaeo-environmental data set from the Petit Lac d’Annecy. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that regional climate phenomena such as the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation are partly responsible for landscape dynamics at Petit Lac d’Annecy throughout the late Holocene. We find that the Petit Lac d’Annecy catchment typically requires decades, or longer, to respond to changes in precipitation, reflecting the stochastic nature of river sediment storage and transport. The use of a 4 yr integrated lake core record effectively attenuates the ‘signal shredding’ effect of shorter-term internally generated sediment transport processes. Nonetheless, the lake record of climatically induced geormorphic process–responses is weak compared with the pervasive impact of human activities.
0959-6836
Jones, Richard T.
8c51534e-9b84-45e7-aaf2-96cf66772b7e
Reinhardt, Liam J.
8388707a-69c9-4063-afc9-6b5454c68c90
Dearing, John A.
dff37300-b8a6-4406-ad84-89aa01de03d7
Crook, Darren
7a6ecc59-7926-4689-a97f-b7d629270f77
Chiverrell, Richard C.
193e87d2-aae0-499c-b92b-af07eb2a494d
Welsh, Katharine E.
926e0d3a-86fe-420e-96f4-526ed58d89a0
Vergès, Elizabeth
ccf836b3-3a0c-4e10-ab7e-8d3ef46c4605
Jones, Richard T.
8c51534e-9b84-45e7-aaf2-96cf66772b7e
Reinhardt, Liam J.
8388707a-69c9-4063-afc9-6b5454c68c90
Dearing, John A.
dff37300-b8a6-4406-ad84-89aa01de03d7
Crook, Darren
7a6ecc59-7926-4689-a97f-b7d629270f77
Chiverrell, Richard C.
193e87d2-aae0-499c-b92b-af07eb2a494d
Welsh, Katharine E.
926e0d3a-86fe-420e-96f4-526ed58d89a0
Vergès, Elizabeth
ccf836b3-3a0c-4e10-ab7e-8d3ef46c4605

Jones, Richard T., Reinhardt, Liam J., Dearing, John A., Crook, Darren, Chiverrell, Richard C., Welsh, Katharine E. and Vergès, Elizabeth (2013) Detecting climatic signals in an anthropogenically disturbed catchment: the late-Holocene record from the Petit Lac d'Annecy, French Alps. The Holocene. (doi:10.1177/0959683613486940).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Historical and documentary records from the Petit Lac d’Annecy, indicate that human activities have been the dominant ‘geomorphic process’ shaping the catchment during the late Holocene, with deforestation, agriculture and artificial drainage profoundly affecting both the pace and spatial distribution of soil erosion. The impact of past climatic change on the evolution of the catchment is less certain because of the lack of long-term climate records for the site. Previous attempts to use the sediment record from the lake to investigate the role past climate change may have played were hampered by the difficulty in isolating and disentangling the climatic signal preserved within the archive, because of overprinting of human activity. This is a common problem in regions with a long history of human activity in the landscape. In this study we use a range of novel statistical techniques (including cross-correlation and cross spectral analysis) to assess the relative importance of climate in driving landscape = dynamics. The statistical analysis is carried out on an updated high-resolution palaeo-environmental data set from the Petit Lac d’Annecy. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that regional climate phenomena such as the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation are partly responsible for landscape dynamics at Petit Lac d’Annecy throughout the late Holocene. We find that the Petit Lac d’Annecy catchment typically requires decades, or longer, to respond to changes in precipitation, reflecting the stochastic nature of river sediment storage and transport. The use of a 4 yr integrated lake core record effectively attenuates the ‘signal shredding’ effect of shorter-term internally generated sediment transport processes. Nonetheless, the lake record of climatically induced geormorphic process–responses is weak compared with the pervasive impact of human activities.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: June 2013
e-pub ahead of print date: 10 June 2013
Organisations: Palaeoenvironment Laboratory (PLUS)

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 353905
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/353905
ISSN: 0959-6836
PURE UUID: 6457e5c3-ecc2-4c03-b7f9-b64559d32f96
ORCID for John A. Dearing: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1466-9640

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Date deposited: 25 Jun 2013 09:00
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:19

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Contributors

Author: Richard T. Jones
Author: Liam J. Reinhardt
Author: John A. Dearing ORCID iD
Author: Darren Crook
Author: Richard C. Chiverrell
Author: Katharine E. Welsh
Author: Elizabeth Vergès

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