Palynological analysis of the MIS 11 interglacial from a sediment succession from Fucino basin, Italy

There are large gaps in our understanding of how the global water cycle and ecosystems will respond to future global warming. The study of sedimentary records can give us insight into climatic patterns in the past, how ecosystems adapted to warmer temperature conditions, and could serve as analogues for future global warming. The Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11c (ca. 426-396 ka) arises as one of the anomalously long and warm interglacials of the past 800 ka, with a global temperature ca. 0.5-0.7 ºC higher and a relative sea level of ca. 6-13 m higher than the pre-industrial Holocene, respectively. The Fucino Basin (Central Italy) contains a continuous lacustrine succession for the last 430 ka including MIS 11, dated by tephrochronology. Paleopalynology can be very useful as an environmental and paleoclimatic tool, through observing the changes in vegetation caused by temperature and precipitation changes. In this study, we present the preliminary results of the pollen analyses of the Fucino sedimentary succession between MIS 11c and the glacial termination V (glacial-interglacial transition between MIS 12 and MIS 11) to reconstruct the environmental change during this period. Our results show that an increase in humidity at the start of the MIS 11c interglacial the Fucino Basin, which is indicated by the exponential growth of the Abies population. Also, the generally warm interglacial was characterized by millennial-scale climate variability with several periods when the temperature decreased and the aridity increased, as testified by the Abies population decreasing and the Poaceae, Artemisia, Amaranthaceae, Hippophae, Ephedra and Pinus association increasing. The Fucino Basin lacustrine pollen record can provide us with a very accurate vision of the response of the vegetation during a period warmer than pre-industrial Holocene, thus arising as a potential reference fossil scenario that allows us evaluating the potential ecosystem impact of the current anthropogenic global warming.