Sudden disappearance of yew (Taxus baccata) woodlands from eastern England coincides with a possible climate event around 4.2 ka ago

作者：Tatiana Bebchuk, Paul J. Krusic, Joshua H. Pike, Alma Piermattei, Ronny Friedrich, Lukas Wacker, Alan Crivellaro, Tito Arosio, Alexander V. Kirdyanov, Philip L. Gibbard, David Brown, Jan Esper, Frederick Reinig, Ulf Büntgen · 发表于：Quaternary Science Reviews · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108414 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Geology and Paleoclimatology Research、Tree-ring climate responses、Lichen and fungal ecology

Tree-ring chronologies form the backbone of high-resolution palaeoclimatology. However, their number declines drastically prior to medieval times, and only a few such records worldwide extend back to the mid-Holocene. Here, we present a collection of more than 400 subfossil yew (Taxus baccata L.) trees excavated from near sea-level peat-rich sediments in the Fenland region of eastern England. The well-preserved yew trunks are between two and eight metres long, often exhibit adventitious root layers, and contain up to 400 rings of highly irregular growth. Combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating resulted in two tree-ring width chronologies that comprise 36 and 32 trees, span 413 and 418 years, exhibit mean inter-series correlations (Rbar) of 0.50 and 0.51, and were provisionally dated to 5225−4813 (±4) and 4612−4195 (±6) years cal BP. Together with a total of 63 radiocarbon dates (14C), our subfossil tree-ring evidence suggests that yew establishment (or onset of preservation) began ∼5250 years cal BP and resulted in extensive climax forests between 5200 and 4200 years cal BP. A first stage of yew decline ∼4800−4600 years cal BP was possibly caused by oxygen deprivation from soil wetting, whereas yew disappearance ∼4200 years cal BP is suggested to have been triggered by marine inundation as a consequence of rapid sea-level rise. Both phases of yew decline in eastern England coincide with marked reductions in subfossil oak and pine from peatbogs in Ireland, Germany ...