Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Introduction
Due to its narrow/shallow Bosporus Strait connection to the Mediterranean, the
Black Sea is a well strati
ed marginal sea since about 8,000 years. However, on
longer timescales the Black Sea is characterized by transient environments critically
depending on sea level and climate changes on glacial/interglacial time scales with
marine conditions during warm interglacials and freshwater/brackish conditions
during glacials (Badertscher et al.
2011
; Shumilovskikh et al.
2012
). Particularly
during the last glacial terminations, shifts from limnic to almost fully marine
conditions were accompanied by major changes on the bordering terrestrial envi-
ronments that are presently under the in
uence of Atlantic/Mediterranean and
central to eastern European climates. While the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene
transition received some attention in the western Black Sea (e.g., Bahr et al.
2008
)
the lack of adequate sediments and poorly dated terrestrial archives inhibited a
detailed land-ocean comparison for older glacial/interglacial transitions (also known
as terminations) and interglacials.
New sediment cores from the SE Black Sea, covering the last 134 thousand
years (ka), provide detailed paleoceanographic/paleolimnologic data of environ-
mental changes in the marine/limnic Black Sea as well as records of vegetation
dynamics and changing precipitation regimes in the Anatolian hinterland. Stalag-
mites from Sofular Cave, northwestern Anatolia, serve as long complementary
terrestrial paleorecords and help to construct a precise chronology for the sediment
cores. Combining both archives allows us to quantify land-ocean interaction on the
regional scale more precisely and helps us to consider the impact of hemispheric/
North Atlantic climate and global sea level changes during the Holocene, Eemian
and the last two teminations (I + II).
fl
2 Materials and Methods
The speleothems from Sofular cave (41
°
25
′
N, 31
°
56
′
E) in northwestern Turkey
18
O and
13
C records primarily
were precisely Uranium-series dated and their
δ
δ
18
O of the Black Sea-surface water and soil productivity/
vegetation density above the cave, respectively (Fleitmann et al.
2009
; Badertscher
et al.
2011
;G
re
fl
ect changes in the
δ
ö
kt
ü
rk et al.
2011
). The sediment cores 22-GC3 (42
°
13.53
′
N, 36
°
29.55
′
E, 838 m bsl), 22-GC8 (42
°
13.53
′
N, 36
°
29.59
′
E, 847 m bsl), and 24-GC3
(41
E, 208 m bsl) were collected in 2007 during the RV
Meteor cruise M72/5 in the south-eastern Black Sea (Fig.
1
). Sedimentological,
geochemical, and palynological data were obtained on high-resolution sample
series from the core intervals of interest, namely the Holocene, Eemian and the last
two glacial/interglacial transitions. Elemental analyzes, x-ray
°
28.66
′
N, 37
°
11.68
′
fluorescence scanning
(XRF), and sedimentological analyses (e.g., counting of large >150
fl
m detrital
particles transported by ice, IRD) were used to characterize changes in the
µ
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