Impacto do último máximo glacial pleistocênico na vegetação de Humaitá, Amazonas

Abstract

The amount of pollen data recovered from the sedimentary record of western Amazonia is still far from adequate to fully approach climate changes in this region over the Last Glacial period. In the present work, vegetation dynamics of western Amazonia during the past 42000 cal yr BP is analyzed in the context of previous and new pollen data. Two sediment cores were sampled from fluvial terraces of the Madeira River, a major southern Amazonian tributary. The study sites are covered by tropical rainforest vegetation. The sedimentary deposits consist mostly of massive sand, heterolithic bedded sand/mud as well as either laminated or massive mud. These deposits were formed under reducing and low energy conditions in an abandoned fluvial channel/lake environment. Such depositional setting favored the preservation of a pollen community suggestive of arboreous taxa common to the modern Amazonian rainforest mixed with herbaceous vegetation. Pollen analysis also recorded a significant proportion of cold-adapted Andean tree species, represented by Alnus (0-20%), Hedyosmum (1-15%), Podocarpus (0-5%), Illex (1-11%) and Weinmannia (0-1%) at least between > 42,000 cal yr BP and 10,300 cal yr BP. During the Holocene, only pollen representative of herbs and modern Amazon vegetation persisted. This new pollen record confirm previous multiple proxies analyzes of two sediment cores sampled also from Humaitá region, where a significant plant population, at present restricted to Andean areas located at altitudes higher than 2000 - 3000 m, in areas of the Amazonia lowland toward the onset, and probably, during the Last Glacial Maximum.