Late Quaternary grassland (Campos), gallery forest, fire and climate dynamics, studied by pollen, charcoal and multivariate analysis of the Sa˜o Francisco de Assis core in western Rio Grande do Sul (southern Brazil)

Late Quaternary grassland (Campos), gallery forest, fire and climate dynamics, studied by pollen, charcoal and multivariate analysis of the Sa˜o Francisco de Assis core in western Rio Grande do Sul (southern Brazil) Hermann Behlinga,*, Valerio DePatta... More

Late Quaternary grassland (Campos), gallery forest, fire and climate dynamics, studied by pollen, charcoal and multivariate analysis of the Sa˜o Francisco de Assis core in western Rio Grande do Sul (southern Brazil) Hermann Behlinga,*, Valerio DePatta Pillarb , Soraia Girardi Bauermannc a Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, B. O. Box 330440, 28334 Bremen, Germany b Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 91540-000 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil c Laborato´rio de Palinologia, Universidade Luterana do Brazil (ULBRA), Rua Miguel Tostes 101, 90. 420-280 Canoas, RS, Brazil Received 22 July 2003; accepted 15 October 2004 Abstract We present a detailed pollen and charcoal record of a 368-cm-long sediment core from the lowland Campos (grassland) region near the city of Sa˜o Francisco de Assis in the western Rio Grande do Sul State in southern Brazil. Based on four AMS radiocarbon dates, the record represents the last about 22,000 cal yr BP. The region was Less