Results of a sediment profile and water analyses from Lake Hancza in northeastern Poland, supplement to: Lauterbach, Stefan; Brauer, Achim; Andersen, Nils; Danielopol, Dan L; Dulski, Peter; Hüls, Matthias; Milecka, Krystyna; Namiotko, Tadeusz; Plessen, Birgit; von Grafenstein, Ulrich; DecLakes participants (2010): Multi-proxy evidence for early to mid-Holocene environmental and climatic changes in northeastern Poland. Boreas, 40(1), 57-72

• Main Authors: Lauterbach, Stefan, Brauer, Achim, Andersen, Nils, Danielopol, Dan L, Dulski, Peter, Hüls, Matthias, Milecka, Krystyna, Namiotko, Tadeusz, Plessen, Birgit, von Grafenstein, Ulrich, DecLakes Participants
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2010
• Subjects: Piston corer, UWITEC; Boreas; Nils; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.743125; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.743125

We investigated the sedimentary record of Lake Hancza (northeastern Poland) using a multi-proxy approach, focusing on early to mid-Holocene climatic and environmental changes. AMS 14C dating of terrestrial macrofossils and sedimentation rate estimates from occasional varve thickness measurements were used to establish a chronology. The onset of the Holocene at c. 11600 cal. a BP is marked by the decline of Lateglacial shrub vegetation and a shift from clastic-detrital deposition to an autochthonous sedimentation dominated by biochemical calcite precipitation. Between 10000 and 9000 cal. a BP, a further environmental and climatic improvement is indicated by the spread of deciduous forests, an increase in lake organic matter and a 1.7% rise in the oxygen isotope ratios of both endogenic calcite and ostracod valves. Rising d18O values were probably caused by a combination of hydrological and climatic factors. The persistence of relatively cold and dry climate conditions in northeastern Poland during the first one and a half millennia of the Holocene could be related to a regional eastern European atmospheric circulation pattern. Prevailing anticyclonic circulation linked to a high-pressure cell above the retreating Scandinavian Ice Sheet might have blocked the influence of warm and moist Westerlies and attenuated the early Holocene climatic amelioration in the Lake Hancza region until the final decay of the ice sheet. : ESF project DecLakes (Decadal Holocene and Lateglacial variability of the oxygen isotopic composition in precipitation over Europe reconstructed from deep-lake sediments)