Centre de Recherche et d’Enseignement de Géosciences de l’Environnement
facilityAix-en-Provence, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Research output, citation impact, and the most-cited recent papers from Centre de Recherche et d’Enseignement de Géosciences de l’Environnement (France). Aggregated across the NobleBlocks index of 300M+ scholarly works.
Top-cited papers from Centre de Recherche et d’Enseignement de Géosciences de l’Environnement
The IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon calibration curves have been revised utilizing newly available and updated data sets from 14 C measurements on tree rings, plant macrofossils, speleothems, corals, and foraminifera. The calibration curves were derived from the data using the random walk model (RWM) used to generate IntCal09 and Marine09, which has been revised to account for additional uncertainties and error structures. The new curves were ratified at the 21st International Radiocarbon conference in July 2012 and are available as Supplemental Material at www.radiocarbon.org. The database can be accessed at http://intcal.qub.ac.uk/intcal13/.
ABSTRACT Radiocarbon ( 14 C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14 C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14 C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14 C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14 C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14 C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neanderthals.
The focus of this paper is the conversion of radiocarbon ages to calibrated (cal) ages for the interval 24,000–0 cal BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950), based upon a sample set of dendrochronologically dated tree rings, uranium-thorium dated corals, and varve-counted marine sediment. The 14 C age–cal age information, produced by many laboratories, is converted to Δ 14 C profiles and calibration curves, for the atmosphere as well as the oceans. We discuss offsets in measured l4 C ages and the errors therein, regional 14 C age differences, tree–coral 14 C age comparisons and the time dependence of marine reservoir ages, and evaluate decadal vs . single-year 14 C results. Changes in oceanic deepwater circulation, especially for the 16,000–11,000 cal BP interval, are reflected in the Δ 14 C values of INTCAL98.
The IntCal04 and Marine04 radiocarbon calibration curves have been updated from 12 cal kBP (cal kBP is here defined as thousands of calibrated years before AD 1950), and extended to 50 cal kBP, utilizing newly available data sets that meet the IntCal Working Group criteria for pristine corals and other carbonates and for quantification of uncertainty in both the 14 C and calendar timescales as established in 2002. No change was made to the curves from 0–12 cal kBP. The curves were constructed using a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) implementation of the random walk model used for IntCal04 and Marine04. The new curves were ratified at the 20th International Radiocarbon Conference in June 2009 and are available in the Supplemental Material at www.radiocarbon.org .
Although the dramatic climate disruptions of the last glacial period have received considerable attention, relatively little has been directed toward climate variability in the Holocene (11,500 cal yr B.P. to the present). Examination of ?50 globally distributed paleoclimate records reveals as many as six periods of significant rapid climate change during the time periods 9000"8000, 6000"5000, 4200"3800, 3500"2500, 1200"1000, and 600"150 cal yr B.P. Most of the climate change events in these globally distributed records are characterized by polar cooling, tropical aridity, and major atmospheric circulation changes, although in the most recent interval (600"150 cal yr B.P.), polar cooling was accompanied by increased moisture in some parts of the tropics. Several intervals coincide with major disruptions of civilization, illustrating the human significance of Holocene climate variability.
ABSTRACT The concentration of radiocarbon ( 14 C) differs between ocean and atmosphere. Radiocarbon determinations from samples which obtained their 14 C in the marine environment therefore need a marine-specific calibration curve and cannot be calibrated directly against the atmospheric-based IntCal20 curve. This paper presents Marine20, an update to the internationally agreed marine radiocarbon age calibration curve that provides a non-polar global-average marine record of radiocarbon from 0–55 cal kBP and serves as a baseline for regional oceanic variation. Marine20 is intended for calibration of marine radiocarbon samples from non-polar regions; it is not suitable for calibration in polar regions where variability in sea ice extent, ocean upwelling and air-sea gas exchange may have caused larger changes to concentrations of marine radiocarbon. The Marine20 curve is based upon 500 simulations with an ocean/atmosphere/biosphere box-model of the global carbon cycle that has been forced by posterior realizations of our Northern Hemispheric atmospheric IntCal20 14 C curve and reconstructed changes in CO 2 obtained from ice core data. These forcings enable us to incorporate carbon cycle dynamics and temporal changes in the atmospheric 14 C level. The box-model simulations of the global-average marine radiocarbon reservoir age are similar to those of a more complex three-dimensional ocean general circulation model. However, simplicity and speed of the box model allow us to use a Monte Carlo approach to rigorously propagate the uncertainty in both the historic concentration of atmospheric 14 C and other key parameters of the carbon cycle through to our final Marine20 calibration curve. This robust propagation of uncertainty is fundamental to providing reliable precision for the radiocarbon age calibration of marine based samples. We make a first step towards deconvolving the contributions of different processes to the total uncertainty; discuss the main differences of Marine20 from the previous age calibration curve Marine13; and identify the limitations of our approach together with key areas for further work. The updated values for ΔR , the regional marine radiocarbon reservoir age corrections required to calibrate against Marine20, can be found at the data base http://calib.org/marine/ .
New radiocarbon calibration curves, IntCal04 and Marine04, have been constructed and internationally ratified to replace the terrestrial and marine components of IntCal98. The new calibration data sets extend an additional 2000 yr, from 0–26 cal kyr BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950), and provide much higher resolution, greater precision, and more detailed structure than IntCal98. For the Marine04 curve, dendrochronologically-dated tree-ring samples, converted with a box diffusion model to marine mixed-layer ages, cover the period from 0–10.5 cal kyr BP. Beyond 10.5 cal kyr BP, high-resolution marine data become available from foraminifera in varved sediments and U/Th-dated corals. The marine records are corrected with site-specific 14 C reservoir age information to provide a single global marine mixed-layer calibration from 10.5–26.0 cal kyr BP. A substantial enhancement relative to IntCal98 is the introduction of a random walk model, which takes into account the uncertainty in both the calendar age and the 14 C age to calculate the underlying calibration curve (Buck and Blackwell, this issue). The marine data sets and calibration curve for marine samples from the surface mixed layer (Marine04) are discussed here. The tree-ring data sets, sources of uncertainty, and regional offsets are presented in detail in a companion paper by Reimer et al. (this issue).
Increased concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases have led to a global mean surface temperature 1.0°C higher than during the pre-industrial period. We expand on the recent IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5°C and review the additional risks associated with higher levels of warming, each having major implications for multiple geographies, climates, and ecosystems. Limiting warming to 1.5°C rather than 2.0°C would be required to maintain substantial proportions of ecosystems and would have clear benefits for human health and economies. These conclusions are relevant for people everywhere, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where the escalation of climate-related risks may prevent the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
This paper presents an alternative, “Latin” vision of our societies. Here the urgent societal issue is not to celebrate freedom from social constraints, but to re‐establish communal embeddedness. The citizen of 2002 is less interested in the objects of consumption than in the social links and identities that come with them. This Latin view holds that people like to gather together in tribes and that such social, proximate communities are more affective and influential on people’s behaviour than either marketing institutions or other “formal” cultural authorities. There is also an element of resistance and re‐appropriation in the acts of being, gathering and experiencing together. This view of the shared experience of tribes sets it apart from both Northern notions of segmented markets and one‐to‐one relationships. In this Latin view, the effective marketing of 2002 and beyond is not to accept and exploit consumers in their contemporary individualisation, as Northern approaches might. Rather the future of marketing is in offering and supporting a renewed sense of community. Marketing becomes tribal marketing. In a marketing profession challenged by the Internet phenomenon, tribal marketing is by no means just another passing fad but a Trojan horse to induce companies to take on board the re‐emergence of the quest for community.
Dedicated to the memory of three pioneers, İhsan Ketin, Sırrı Erinç and Melih Tokay, and a recent student, Aykut Barka, who burnt himself out in pursuit of the mysteries of the North Anatolian Fault. ▪ Abstract The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a 1200-km-long dextral strike-slip fault zone that formed by progressive strain localization in a generally westerly widening right-lateral keirogen in northern Turkey mostly along an interface juxtaposing subduction-accretion material to its south and older and stiffer continental basements to its north. The NAF formed approximately 13 to 11 Ma ago in the east and propagated westward. It reached the Sea of Marmara no earlier than 200 ka ago, although shear-related deformation in a broad zone there had already commenced in the late Miocene. The fault zone has a very distinct morphological expression and is seismically active. Since the seventeenth century, it has shown cyclical seismic behavior, with century-long cycles beginning in the east and progressing westward. For earlier times, the record is less clear but does indicate a lively seismicity. The twentieth century record has been successfully interpreted in terms of a Coulomb failure model, whereby every earthquake concentrates the shear stress at the western tips of the broken segments leading to westward migration of large earthquakes. The August 17 and November 12, 1999, events have loaded the Marmara segment of the fault, mapped since the 1999 earthquakes, and a major, M ≤ 7.6 event is expected in the next half century with an approximately 50% probability on this segment. Currently, the strain in the Sea of Marmara region is highly asymmetric, with greater strain to the south of the Northern Strand. This is conditioned by the geology, and it is believed that this is generally the case for the entire North Anatolian Fault Zone. What is now needed is a more detailed geological mapping base with detailed paleontology and magnetic stratigraphy in the shear-related basins and more paleomagnetic observations to establish shear-related rotations.
Subfossil pollen and plant macrofossil data derived from 14C-dated sediment profiles can provide quantitative information on glacial and interglacial climates. The data allow climate variables related to growing-season warmth, winter cold, and plant-available moisture to be reconstructed. Continental-scale reconstructions have been made for the mid-Holocene (MH, around 6 ka) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, around 21 ka), allowing comparison with palaeoclimate simulations currently being carried out as part of the fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The synthesis of the available MH and LGM climate reconstructions and their uncertainties, obtained using modern-analogue, regression and model-inversion techniques, is presented for four temperature variables and two moisture variables. Reconstructions of the same variables based on surface-pollen assemblages are shown to be accurate and unbiased. Reconstructed LGM and MH climate anomaly patterns are coherent, consistent between variables, and robust with respect to the choice of technique. They support a conceptual model of the controls of Late Quaternary climate change whereby the first-order effects of orbital variations and greenhouse forcing on the seasonal cycle of temperature are predictably modified by responses of the atmospheric circulation and surface energy balance.
Anthropogenic fluid injections are known to induce earthquakes. The mechanisms involved are poorly understood, and our ability to assess the seismic hazard associated with geothermal energy or unconventional hydrocarbon production remains limited. We directly measure fault slip and seismicity induced by fluid injection into a natural fault. We observe highly dilatant and slow [~4 micrometers per second (μm/s)] aseismic slip associated with a 20-fold increase of permeability, which transitions to faster slip (~10 μm/s) associated with reduced dilatancy and micro-earthquakes. Most aseismic slip occurs within the fluid-pressurized zone and obeys a rate-strengthening friction law μ = 0.67 + 0.045ln(v/v₀) with v₀ = 0.1 μm/s. Fluid injection primarily triggers aseismic slip in this experiment, with micro-earthquakes being an indirect effect mediated by aseismic creep.
Functional diversity is the diversity of species traits in ecosystems. This concept is increasingly used in ecological research, yet its formal definition and measurements are currently under discussion. As the overall behavior and consistency of functional diversity indices have not been described so far, the novice user risks choosing an inaccurate index or a set of redundant indices to represent functional diversity. In our study we closely examine functional diversity indices to clarify their accuracy, consistency, and independence. Following current theory, we categorize them into functional richness, evenness, or divergence indices. We considered existing indices as well as new indices developed in this study. The new indices aimed at remedying the weaknesses of currently used indices (e.g., by taking into account intraspecific variability). Using virtual data sets, we test (1) whether indices respond to community changes as expected from their category and (2) whether the indices within each category are consistent and independent of indices from other categories. We also test the accuracy of methods proposed for the use of categorical traits. Most classical functional richness indices either failed to describe functional richness or were correlated with functional divergence indices. We therefore recommend using the new functional richness indices that consider intraspecific variability and thus empty space in the functional niche space. In contrast, most functional evenness and divergence indices performed well with respect to all proposed tests. For categorical variables, we do not recommend blending discrete and real‐valued traits (except for indices based on distance measures) since functional evenness and divergence have no transposable meaning for discrete traits. Nonetheless, species diversity indices can be applied to categorical traits (using trait levels instead of species) in order to describe functional richness and equitability.
rises but lose mass and become sensitive to orbital changes. Equatorial dust accumulation engenders supraglacial oligotrophic meltwater ecosystems, favorable for cyanobacteria and certain eukaryotes. Meltwater flushing through cracks enables organic burial and submarine deposition of airborne volcanic ash. The subglacial ocean is turbulent and well mixed, in response to geothermal heating and heat loss through the ice cover, increasing with latitude. Terminal carbonate deposits, unique to Cryogenian glaciations, are products of intense weathering and ocean stratification. Whole-ocean warming and collapsing peripheral bulges allow marine coastal flooding to continue long after ice-sheet disappearance. The evolutionary legacy of Snowball Earth is perceptible in fossils and living organisms.
Reconstructing the impact of Heinrich events outside the main belt of ice rafting is crucial to understanding the underlying causes of these abrupt climatic events. A high-resolution study of a marine sediment core from the Iberian margin demonstrates that this midlatitude area was strongly affected both by cooling and advection of low-salinity arctic water masses during the last three Heinrich events. These paleoclimatic time series reveal the internal complexity of each of the last three Heinrich events and illustrate the value of parallel studies of the organic and inorganic fractions of the sediments.
As international concern for the survival of deltas grows, the Mekong River delta, the world's third largest delta, densely populated, considered as Southeast Asia's most important food basket, and rich in biodiversity at the world scale, is also increasingly affected by human activities and exposed to subsidence and coastal erosion. Several dams have been constructed upstream of the delta and many more are now planned. We quantify from high-resolution SPOT 5 satellite images large-scale shoreline erosion and land loss between 2003 and 2012 that now affect over 50% of the once strongly advancing >600 km-long delta shoreline. Erosion, with no identified change in the river's discharge and in wave and wind conditions over this recent period, is consistent with: (1) a reported significant decrease in coastal surface suspended sediment from the Mekong that may be linked to dam retention of its sediment, (2) large-scale commercial sand mining in the river and delta channels, and (3) subsidence due to groundwater extraction. Shoreline erosion is already responsible for displacement of coastal populations. It is an additional hazard to the integrity of this Asian mega delta now considered particularly vulnerable to accelerated subsidence and sea-level rise, and will be exacerbated by future hydropower dams.
The rapidly increasing use of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) in consumer products and medical applications has raised ecological and human health concerns. A key question for addressing these concerns is whether Ag NP toxicity is mechanistically unique to nanoparticulate silver, or if it is a result of the release of silver ions. Furthermore, since Ag NPs are produced in a large variety of monomer sizes and coatings, and since their physicochemical behavior depends on the media composition, it is important to understand how these variables modulate toxicity. We found that a lower ionic strength medium resulted in greater toxicity (measured as growth inhibition) of all tested Ag NPs to Caenorhabditis elegans and that both dissolved silver and coating influenced Ag NP toxicity. We found a linear correlation between Ag NP toxicity and dissolved silver, but no correlation between size and toxicity. We used three independent and complementary approaches to investigate the mechanisms of toxicity of differentially coated and sized Ag NPs: pharmacological (rescue with trolox and N-acetylcysteine), genetic (analysis of metal-sensitive and oxidative stress-sensitive mutants), and physicochemical (including analysis of dissolution of Ag NPs). Oxidative dissolution was limited in our experimental conditions (maximally 15% in 24 h) yet was key to the toxicity of most Ag NPs, highlighting a critical role for dissolved silver complexed with thiols in the toxicity of all tested Ag NPs. Some Ag NPs (typically less soluble due to size or coating) also acted via oxidative stress, an effect specific to nanoparticulate silver. However, in no case studied here was the toxicity of a Ag NP greater than would be predicted by complete dissolution of the same mass of silver as silver ions.
Four previously known ash layers (Ash Zones I and II, Saksunarvatn and the Settlement layer) all originating in Iceland, have been identified in the Central Greenland ice core GRIP. This correlation of the ash between the different environments is achieved by comparison of the chemical composition of glass shards from the ash. This establishes and confirms detailed correlations between the different types of depositional records and the absolute dating of the younger part of the ice core by counting annual layers dates the eruptions accurately. A precise connection with dates obtained by14C beyond the range of dendrochronology is established which provides an excellent confirmation of230Th-234U dates from corals. Four additional Icelandic ash layers have also been identified in the core but not yet correlated with known ash deposits.
Impacts of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are imperfectly constrained by ecosystem models and direct observations. Pervasive ecosystem transformations occurred in response to warming and associated climatic changes during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, which was comparable in magnitude to warming projected for the next century under high-emission scenarios. We reviewed 594 published paleoecological records to examine compositional and structural changes in terrestrial vegetation since the last glacial period and to project the magnitudes of ecosystem transformations under alternative future emission scenarios. Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation, with accompanying disruption of ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity.
Understanding animal movement is essential to elucidate how animals interact, survive, and thrive in a changing world. Recent technological advances in data collection and management have transformed our understanding of animal "movement ecology" (the integrated study of organismal movement), creating a big-data discipline that benefits from rapid, cost-effective generation of large amounts of data on movements of animals in the wild. These high-throughput wildlife tracking systems now allow more thorough investigation of variation among individuals and species across space and time, the nature of biological interactions, and behavioral responses to the environment. Movement ecology is rapidly expanding scientific frontiers through large interdisciplinary and collaborative frameworks, providing improved opportunities for conservation and insights into the movements of wild animals, and their causes and consequences.