Phytolith-inferred transfer function for paleohydrological reconstruction of Dajiuhu peatland, central China

Depth to water table (DWT, the depth from the water surface to the top of the peat surface) is one of the most important environmental variables related to the habitat types and distribution of vegetation within a subalpine peatland. The distribution of phytolith assemblages and basic environmental...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Holocene (Sevenoaks) 2018-10, Vol.28 (10), p.1623-1630
Main Authors: Liu, Hongye, Gu, Yansheng, Lun, Zijian, Qin, Yangmin, Cheng, Shenggao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calibration
Data
Data processing
Distribution
Ecological monitoring
Groundwater table
Hydrologic data
Hydrology
Magnetic permeability
Magnetic susceptibility
Organic carbon
Peat
Peatlands
Reconstruction
Redundancy
Soil
Soil investigations
Soil surfaces
Spatial distribution
Total organic carbon
Transfer functions
Variance
Variance analysis
Water depth
Water table
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Summary:Depth to water table (DWT, the depth from the water surface to the top of the peat surface) is one of the most important environmental variables related to the habitat types and distribution of vegetation within a subalpine peatland. The distribution of phytolith assemblages and basic environmental data from 43 surface soil samples with significant ecological and hydrological gradients were investigated to generate transfer functions for quantitative reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes in Dajiuhu peatland, central China. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA) were employed to explore the relationship between main environmental variables and phytolith morphotypes and distributions. Our results indicate that the spatial distribution of phytoliths was significantly correlated with the DWT (25% variance), total organic carbon (TOC, 10% variance) and magnetic susceptibility (χ, 7% variance). We established the transfer functions for the significant variables based on modern analogue technique (MAT), weighted averaging techniques (WA) and weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS), and model performance was assessed using bootstrap cross-validation. The high correspondence of the predicted DWT results based on phytolith-environment calibration data with observed data reflects that the phytolith-based WA-PLS is a reliable effective calibration method for the quantitative DWT reconstruction of ombrotrophic (rain-fed) subalpine peatland.
ISSN:0959-6836
1477-0911
DOI:10.1177/0959683618782590