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Linking hurricane landfalls, precipitation variability, fires, and vegetation response over the past millennium from analysis of coastal lagoon sediments, southwestern Dominican Republic

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Abstract

We reconstructed the late-Holocene environmental history of a coastal lagoon in semi-arid southwestern Hispaniola through multiproxy analysis of a sediment core, including pollen, macroscopic and microscopic charcoal, loss-on-ignition analysis (LOI), stable isotope analysis, bulk density, and magnetic susceptibility. Four chronological accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates indicated that our core represents the past ~1000 years. We interpreted ten hurricanes events over the past millennium from high-resolution geological proxies, LOI data, and ostracod valve stable oxygen isotope data, thus producing the first long record of hurricanes from the Dominican Republic. Geological proxies indicated a high-energy event abruptly changed the ecosystem state of our core site from a shallow mangrove wetland to a lacustrine environment ~330 cal yr BP. We interpret the driver of that event to be the landfall of a strong hurricane that initiated lowland flooding, mangrove mortality, and subsequent peat collapse at the core site. Pollen data indicated that during the relatively moist Medieval Warm Period (MWP), hurricanes led to temporary declines in tropical dry forest taxa that recovered within several decades following disturbance. By comparison, during the relatively arid Little Ice Age (LIA), when precipitation was highly variable in the circum-Caribbean, closely spaced hurricanes seemed to delay forest recovery. Sedimentary charcoal concentrations revealed increased fire activity after inferred hurricane landfalls in the MWP, providing evidence of a link between enhanced biomass and fuel availability during moister periods and burning in recently disturbed dry forests and scrub of our semi-arid study region. Our interpretations of increased aridity and precipitation variability, indicated by alternating thin layers of microbial mats with evaporite layers, along with more frequent hurricanes from ~330 cal yr BP to present, generally agree with other sedimentary records from the circum-Caribbean, and may be linked to a more southerly position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone during the LIA.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to Lisa Kennedy and Kam-biu Liu (BCS-0964138) and a grant from the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research to Kam-biu Liu (IAI-CRN2050). Additional support was provided by Virginia Tech’s Department of Geography and Graduate Student Assembly. We thank Arvind Bhuta, Pedro Martinez, Eilhard Molina, Terry McCloskey, and Tim Richards for field assistance and Chardy Staton, Alyssa Durden, Stewart Scales, Anthony Phillips, and Karlie Tucker for laboratory assistance. We appreciate help from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in acquiring core X-rays, Robert Hershler’s help in identifying gastropods, and logistical and other support from the PuntaCana Ecological Foundation and The Nature Conservancy, Santo Domingo office. We are grateful to the government of the Dominican Republic for permission to access the lake and bring our samples to the U.S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Virginia Tech, 115 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger St., Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    Allison R. LeBlanc & Lisa M. Kennedy

  2. Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Kam-biu Liu

  3. Department of Geography and Geology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, 28403, USA

    Chad S. Lane

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  1. Allison R. LeBlanc
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Correspondence to Allison R. LeBlanc.

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10933_2017_9965_MOESM1_ESM.png

ESM1. Age-depth model for the Alejandro core created using Bayesian age modeling software Bacon (Blaauw and Christen, 2011). (Top Left) Log of objective shows no systematic structure across neighboring iterations, suggesting a good model run. (Top Middle) and (Top Right) show prior initial guesses (green) and posterior (gray) distributions for accumulation rate (i.e., sedimentation rate) and memory (how the accumulation rate is thought to have changed over time), respectively. (Bottom) shows calibrated dates (blue), with the mean age model (red) and 95% confidence interval of dates for a given depth (dashed lines) (6). Grayscale intensity indicates likelihood of an age for a given depth, with darker values indicating more likely calendar ages. (PNG 41 kb)

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LeBlanc, A.R., Kennedy, L.M., Liu, Kb. et al. Linking hurricane landfalls, precipitation variability, fires, and vegetation response over the past millennium from analysis of coastal lagoon sediments, southwestern Dominican Republic. J Paleolimnol 58, 135–150 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-017-9965-z

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