1st September 2001 – 31st August 2002
Royal Society
The objectives of this project are to obtain a new sediment core from the Tenaghi Philippon basin, northeast Greece and undertake preliminary sediment and pollen analyses and radiocarbon dating, providing a first-order stratigraphical framework for the last 150,000 years. This will form a large grant proposal seeking to undertake highly detailed work in order to gain an understanding of the response of vegetation to millennial-scale variability.
The Tenaghi Philippon (TP) basin is arguably the most famous palynological site in Europe containing the longest continuous Quaternary record of vegetational changes, spanning the last one million years. The work was carried out in the 1960s by a group from the University of Amsterdam and results were published in a series of papers over three decades. What is striking about the TP record is its high coherence with reference palaeoclimatic marine sequences on glacial/interglacial timescales, reflecting the sensitivity of local vegetation communities to climate variations, but also the completeness of the sequence.
Given that the original core material from the 1960’s is by now in poor condition (Prof. H. Hooghiemstra, pers. Comm.), this proposal seeks to obtain funds to recover a new sediment core from the TP basin. The reasons for returning to the same site rather than exploring alternative basins are the proven climatic sensitivity of the site and the complete sedimentary sequence it contains. A 50m sequence will be recovered and transported to Leeds for preliminary analyses. These include sediment description, magnetic susceptibility measurements, pollen analysis and sub-sampling for radiocarbon dates.
This project will provide a platform for further research in collaboration with colleagues in UK and also in Amsterdam. For three decades, Tenaghi Philippon has been a benchmark in terrestrial Quaternary studies; it is envisaged that the new sequence will represent an excellent resource for the next decade.