Changes in continental climate, vegetation, and weathering during the Cenozoic cooling as derived from proxy-data

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Louis François; Professor Dr. Volker Mosbrugger
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Paläontologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2008 bis 2015
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 63178513

Within WP 1, vegetation and climate maps for selected time intervals of the Cenozoic are reconstructed using plant fossils (palynofloras and megafloras) as proxies. The climate maps will consider at least six different climatic parameters (mean annual, summer, winter temperature and precipitation) as estimated from the coexistence approach and leaf physiognomy techniques; the vegetation maps will be based on the biome approach in combination with numerical vegetation modeling as a tool for the additional data assimilation. In the evaluation of the climate and vegetation maps pole-to-equator and coast-to-innercontinent gradients will be of particular interest in order to better understand the role of the vegetation, of the hydrological cycle, of oceanic circulation and of the latitudinal energy transport in the Cenozoic climate systems. The results will also be used by WP 3, WP 4, and WP 5 to validate modeling results. Furthermore, the dynamic vegetation model will provide the geographic distributions of vegetation/soil carbon stocks and fluxes. In view of the data assimilation technique, these distributions will be consistent with the paleovegetation data. They will be used to estimate the export of soil organic matter to the river system and the ocean, as well as to evaluate the soil CO2 partial pressures, which in combination with paleoclimatic reconstructions (temperature, runoff), will allow the modeling of the distribution of weathering rates over the continents. The results will provide inorganic/organic carbon and alkalinity input fluxes to the ocean carbon cycle model of WP4.

• DFG-Verfahren: Forschungsgruppen
• Teilprojekt zu: FOR 1070: Understanding Cenozoic Climate Cooling: The Role of the Hydrological Cycle, the Carbon Cycle, and Vegetation Changes
• Internationaler Bezug: Belgien