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    Holocene aridification of India

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    Article (1.648Mb)
    Additional file information (2.699Kb)
    Data Set S1: Measured values for stable oxygen isotopic composition of planktonic foraminifera G. ruber and for the stable carbon isotopic composition of n-alkanoic acids. (44.5Kb)
    Text S1: Methods and data analysis and auxiliary tables and figures. (2.942Mb)
    Date
    2012-02-14
    Author
    Ponton, Camilo  Concept link
    Giosan, Liviu  Concept link
    Eglinton, Timothy I.  Concept link
    Fuller, Dorian Q.  Concept link
    Johnson, Joel E.  Concept link
    Kumar, Pushpendra  Concept link
    Collett, Timothy S.  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5100
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050722
    DOI
    10.1029/2011GL050722
    Keyword
     Bay of Bengal; Core Monsoon Zone; Monsoon; Neolithic 
    Abstract
    Spanning a latitudinal range typical for deserts, the Indian peninsula is fertile instead and sustains over a billion people through monsoonal rains. Despite the strong link between climate and society, our knowledge of the long-term monsoon variability is incomplete over the Indian subcontinent. Here we reconstruct the Holocene paleoclimate in the core monsoon zone (CMZ) of the Indian peninsula using a sediment core recovered offshore from the mouth of Godavari River. Carbon isotopes of sedimentary leaf waxes provide an integrated and regionally extensive record of the flora in the CMZ and document a gradual increase in aridity-adapted vegetation from ~4,000 until 1,700 years ago followed by the persistence of aridity-adapted plants after that. The oxygen isotopic composition of planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber detects unprecedented high salinity events in the Bay of Bengal over the last 3,000 years, and especially after 1,700 years ago, which suggest that the CMZ aridification intensified in the late Holocene through a series of sub-millennial dry episodes. Cultural changes occurred across the Indian subcontinent as the climate became more arid after ~4,000 years. Sedentary agriculture took hold in the drying central and south India, while the urban Harappan civilization collapsed in the already arid Indus basin. The establishment of a more variable hydroclimate over the last ca. 1,700 years may have led to the rapid proliferation of water-conservation technology in south India.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 39 (2012): L03704, doi:10.1029/2011GL050722.
    Collections
    • Geology and Geophysics (G&G)
    • Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry (MC&G)
    Suggested Citation
    Geophysical Research Letters 39 (2012): L03704
     

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