Sphagnum peatlands of Reunion Island: potential and limitations as environmental archives for the Quaternary of the Indian Ocean.

Gaël Le Roux; Claudine Ah-Peng; Rongqin Liu; Oskar Hagelskjaer; Henar Margenart; Jeroen Sonke; Sophia V. Hansson; Natalia Piotrowska; Corinne Pautot; Pieter Van Beek; Thomas Zambardi; Marc Souhault; François De Vleeschouwer; Laurent Bremond; Fabien Arnaud; Laure Gandois; Dominique Strasberg; David Beilman

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-6027

[Back] [Session BG3.18]

EGU24-6027, updated on 08 Mar 2024

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-6027

EGU General Assembly 2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Sphagnum peatlands of Reunion Island: potential and limitations as environmental archives for the Quaternary of the Indian Ocean.

Gaël Le Roux¹, Claudine Ah-Peng², Rongqin Liu¹, Oskar Hagelskjaer^1,3, Henar Margenart¹, Jeroen Sonke³, Sophia V. Hansson¹, Natalia Piotrowska⁴, Corinne Pautot¹, Pieter Van Beek⁵, Thomas Zambardi⁵, Marc Souhault⁵, François De Vleeschouwer⁶, Laurent Bremond⁷, Fabien Arnaud⁸, Laure Gandois¹, Dominique Strasberg², and David Beilman⁹

Gaël Le Roux et al.

¹CRBE, Univ. Toulouse CNRS IRD, Toulouse, France
²PVBMT Université de La Réunion, Saint-Denis, La Réunion
³GET, Univ. Toulouse CNRS CNES IRD, Toulouse , France
⁴Institute of Physics, Silesian University of Technology , Gliwice , Poland
⁵LEGOS, Univ. Toulouse CNRS CNES IRD, Toulouse , France
⁶IFAECI, Univ Buenos Aires CNRS, Buenos Aires , Argentine
⁷ISEM,Univ. Montpellier CNRS EPHE , Montpellier, France
⁸EDYTEM, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc CNRS, Le Bourget du Lac, France
⁹Dpt of Geography, University of Hawai‘i [Mānoa] , Honolulu, United-States

Contrary to temperate and boreal peatlands built after the glacial retreat, tropical peatlands are potentially recording environmental information pre-dating the Holocene. However on tropical volcanic islands, Sphagnum moss are scarce and/or rarely build peat.

Within the framework of the several projects on the territory of Reunion Island, we sampled peat bogs and Sphagnum mats of Reunion Island in 2021 (Margenat and Le Roux, 2023). The objectives were originally to use them as microplastic traps and thus reveal the history of atmospheric contamination by microplastics in the Indian Ocean over the last fifty years. It turns out some peat cores are older than expected and can provide amazing archives for the Holocene and Last Glacial environmental history of the Indian Ocean and La Réunion Island itself including the last period of strong volcanic activities. For example, one site located in the heart of the National Park is 25 ky old.

In this talk, we will present the diversity of the Sphagnum peatlands of La Réunion, the first results of peat characterization, and the first results of radiometric age dating covering the last glacial maximum, the Holocene, and the most recent periods. We will then discuss potential and limitations of La Réunion peat records in paleo-landscape, paleo-atmosphere and carbon cycle aspects.

References:

Margenat, H., Le Roux, G., 2023. POST EXPEDITION REPORT Field Expedition La Réunion Island, France ATMO-PLASTIC Project. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7643599

How to cite: Le Roux, G., Ah-Peng, C., Liu, R., Hagelskjaer, O., Margenart, H., Sonke, J., Hansson, S. V., Piotrowska, N., Pautot, C., Van Beek, P., Zambardi, T., Souhault, M., De Vleeschouwer, F., Bremond, L., Arnaud, F., Gandois, L., Strasberg, D., and Beilman, D.: Sphagnum peatlands of Reunion Island: potential and limitations as environmental archives for the Quaternary of the Indian Ocean., EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-6027, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-6027, 2024.