Pollen records related to vegetation and climate change from northern Chhattisgarh, central India during the late Quaternary

Abstract

Pollen records from a 1.8-m deep sediment profile from Lakadandh Swamp, Baikunthpur Forest Range of Koriya District, Chhattisgarh (C'garh, central India), show the late Quaternary vegetation and climate history. Lakadandh Swamp occurs in the core monsoon zone of India. The study revealed that between ∼12,785 and ∼9035 cal. yrs BP, tree savannah vegetation, – composed of Poaceae, Amaranthaceae, Tubuliflorae along with the tree taxa Holoptelea sp. and Sapotaceae; sparsely distributed Acacia sp., Emblica officinalis, Lagerstroemia sp., Madhuca indica and Syzygium sp., thickets of Ricinus and Zizyphus sp. – occurred in the region under a cool and dry climate probably indicative of reduced monsoon precipitation. The early part of this phase is comparable with the Younger Dryas (YD) cold event which occurred between ∼12,800 and ∼11,500 yrs BP. Between ∼9035 and ∼4535 cal. yrs BP, the expansion of existing taxa Holoptelea sp., Sapotaceae, Madhuca indica, Ailanthus excelsa and Lagerstroemia sp. as well as the appearance of Acacia, and Shorea robusta, Acanthaceae, Rungia sp., and Ricinus sp., shows the tree savannah vegetation was replaced by open mixed tropical deciduous forest under a regime of warm and moderately humid climate with increased monsoon precipitation. Since ∼4535 cal. yrs BP to Present, owing to the improvement of most of the forest constituents, particularly Madhuca indica, Holoptelea sp., Sapotaceae and Lannea coromandelica, and also with immigration of Terminalia sp., Diospyros sp., Butea sp. and Maytenus sp., mixed tropical deciduous forest has taken over the space covered by open mixed tropical deciduous forest under a warm and relatively more humid climate, with further increase in monsoon precipitation. The existing cereal-based agricultural practice increased during the latter two phases, which could be attributed to increased monsoon precipitation.

Keywords:

• pollen
• tropical vegetation
• climate
• Younger Dryas
• India

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Prof. Sunil Bajpai, Director, Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany (BSIP), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh, India) for providing the infrastructure facilities to accomplish this research work, and for permission to publish. Thanks are due to Dr. C.M. Nautiyal, Scientist ‘E’, Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory, BSIP, for radiocarbon dating of the profile samples. We express our deep gratitude to Prof. William D. Gosling (Department of Palaeoecology and Landscape Ecology, Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and the other anonymous reviewer for their invaluable comments that improved the quality of an earlier version of the manuscript. MFQ thanks Dr. Ruby Ghosh, Scientist ‘C’, BSIP, for her kind permission to do photography on her microscope; Dr. S. Nawaz Ali, Scientist ‘B’, BSIP, for scientific discussion and also for his kind and untiring effort in constructing the plates for vegetation types and field photographs (Plates 1 and 2, respectively) as well as for key palynomorphs (Plate 3). We are also thankful to two additional anonymous reviewers for their kind suggestions. MFQ expresses his sincere thanks to Dr. James B. Riding, Managing Editor, Palynology for taking a keen interest in this paper and also for his kind suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916122.2015.1077172.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M.F. Quamar

MD. FIROZE QUAMAR was awarded a BSc (Hons.) in Botany from the R.D.S. College (Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University-BRABU), Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India in 2000, an MSc in Botany from the University Department of Botany, BRABU, Muzaffarpur, Bihar in 2004 with 1^st Position. He received his PhD (Botany) in 2011 from the University of Lucknow, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. He worked as a Birbal Sahni Research Scholar (BSRS) and Birbal Sahni Research Associate (BSRA) at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany (BSIP) in Lucknow while carrying out research for his PhD and thereafter. He is, as of now, working as a Scientist “B” at the BSIP and his research interests mainly include the reconstruction of palaeovegetation and palaeoclimate in the tropical areas during the Late Quaternary using pollen as a proxy. He also runs a DST Fast Track Young Scientist Project (Reference No. SR/FTP/ES-81/2013, dated 20.01.2014) in Western Himalaya (Jammu and Kashmir), India. He has also received Dr. B.S. Venkatachala Memorial Medal for his outstanding piece of research work in palaeobotany among the young scientists of BSIP in 2014. He has published 27 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

S.K. Bera

SAMIR K. BERA was awarded a BSc in Botany from the University of Calcutta in 1976, an MSc in Botany from the University of Burdwan in 1978 and a PhD from the University of Lucknow in 1989. He is currently a Scientist “F (Retd)” at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow, working on palaeoclimatology and using Quaternary pollen as a proxy. Samir has 32 years research experience, and has published 85 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has visited Antarctica twice, and has supervised several research students.