Landscape Evolution Zones

All proxy information described above is finally used to detect zones of stable climate conditions, and their flora/fauna. Sirocko et al. (2016) presented a first step towards the definition of Landscape Evolution Zones (LEZ) for the last 60,000 years. We took this approach, because pollen are absent from the glacial and many stadial sections and, thus, an extension of the established Holocene pollen zones was impossible. In addition, other climate parameters than vegetation are important aspects of the environment in a volcanic region, and dust, fire, and flood are much more indicative parameters to reconstruct past humidity and aridity (Fuhrmann et al. 2021). Accordingly, the LEZ approach integrates all information available from the ELSA-20-Stack.

The current definition of LEZ will be expanded into more detail and the LEZ approach will be extended back to the last interglacial in an upcoming paper.