Abstract
A 450 cm sediment core from Taperebal, in the mangrove region of northeastern Pará State in northern Brazil has been studied through pollen analysis in order to reconstruct mangrove development and dynamics and to infer relative sea-level (RSL) changes during the Holocene. Six AMS radiocarbon dates, which provide a somewhat limited age control with some uncertainties, suggest early and late Holocene deposits interrupted by a hiatus between them. A patchy vegetation of coastal Amazon rain forest, restinga, salt marsh and some mangrove, which was dominated by Avicennia, covered the study area during the early Holocene period. The occurrence of an early Avicennia dominated mangrove phase has not been reported so far from other sites in northern Brazil. During the mid Holocene mangroves mostly replaced the former coastal Amazon rain forest, restinga and some salt marsh vegetation, reflecting the rise in the RSL. Rhizophora trees expanded markedly and Avicennia became rare. In the sediment core there is apparently a gap between the depths of 115 and 85 cm (possibly starting between 5900 and 5750 b.p.). The deposits above 85 cm are of modern age and were probably deposited during the last decades. This gap can be explained by the lowering of the RSL as is shown for other northern Brazilian coastal sites. The deposition of sediments during the last decades suggests that the modern RSL is high compared to other periods in the Holocene. Pollen data from these deposits show that Rhizophora trees dominate the mangrove forests, also indicating a high RSL.
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Acknowledgements
This work was been carried out within the framework of a Masters thesis from University of Wales, Swansea. Practical work and the writing of the Masters thesis were done at the Center for Marine Tropical Ecology (ZMT) in Bremen. The second supervisor P. Dyrynda is gratefully thanked. Members of the Center for Tropical Marine Ecology and Laboratório de Ciências Ambientais are thanked for their support. The first author acknowledges the help of U. Mehlig during the fieldwork and in the taking of digital photographs of the core. A. Kappel is thanked for constructive comments and logistic assistance during this work. The authors thank the reviewers L. Dupont and A-M. Lezine for constructive comments on the manuscript. This study was carried out as a part of the Brazilian-German Cooperation Project MADAM. The fieldwork and radiocarbon dating were financed by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) and the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under the code 03F0154A
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Vedel, V., Behling, H., Cohen, M. et al. Holocene mangrove dynamics and sea-level changes in northern Brazil, inferences from the Taperebal core in northeastern Pará State. Veget Hist Archaeobot 15, 115–123 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-005-0023-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-005-0023-9