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Assessing meteoric water composition and relative humidity from18O and2H in wood cellulose: paleoclimatic implications for southern Ontario, Canada

1986; Elsevier BV; Volume: 1; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0883-2927(86)90093-4

1872-9134

Thomas W. D. Edwards, P. Fritz,

Tree-ring climate responses

An empirical model is presented that derives the initial isotopic composition of water used by terrestrial plants and the relative humidity that prevailed during photosynthesis from the isotopic composition of oxygen and carbon-bound hydrogen in the plant cellulose. The model uses fixed values for the fractionation factors that describe the evapotranspirative isotopic enrichment of leaf waters and the biochemical fractionations occurring during cellulose synthesis. When applied to cellulose extracted from fossil plant matter, the model can be used to generate quantitative estimates of the temperature and moisture regimes of the past. The application of the model is demonstrated by consideration of δ18O and δ2H results on cellulose from fossil wood collected at Brampton, Ontario. The Brampton data yield records of systematic changes in the temperature and moisture regimes of the eastern Great Lakes region over the past 11 500 a. Both mean annual temperature and photosynthetic humidity increased substantially from values much lower than the present at the end of the Wisconsin Stage, to values higher than the present in the mid-Holocene. The phase relation of the paleotemperature and paleohumidity curves engenders differentiation of the climatic history at Brampton into four characteristic zones: (I) a period of ameliorating climate predominantly much colder and drier than now, lasting until about 7400 B.P.; (II) an "early Hypsithermal" period of warm and dry conditions, that transformed after 6000 a B.P. into (III) the "main Hypsithermal" time of warmth and pronounced moistness. Subsequent climatic detrioration led to establishment of (IV) cool, moist conditions like the present sometime within the last few thousand years.