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Paleovegetation Inferences and Landscape Evolution in the Pantanal Basin

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Flora and Vegetation of the Pantanal Wetland

Abstract

The historical development of the Pantanal vegetation is still poorly understood due to limited paleobotanical records. In this chapter, we review the few pollen records available that tell the vegetation and climatic history of the area for the last ca. 42,000 years. Older findings have not been reported yet. Full-glacial (>19,500 years) and late-glacial (19,500–12,200 years) records are only available in the northern Paraguay River plain. Pollen data show an open landscape during the full glacial, with abundant herbaceous vegetation adapted to a drier and colder climatic setting (especially during the Last Glacial Maximum ~21,000 years). Seasonally flooded and seasonally dry forests established in the late glacial responding to increased humidity and warming. From the latest glacial (>12,000 years) to the middle Holocene (~6,000 years), vegetation in northern and central parts of the Paraguay River was nearly as modern, with further similarity after 3–4 thousand years, which coincides with preserved pollen sequences in outer parts of the basin in the Cuiabá and Taquari fans, in concert with increased humidity in the late Holocene. The Pantanal paleoecological history is still largely fragmentary in time and space; we highlight considerable work has to be done and the potential of palynology for such endeavour.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter benefited from reviews by Danilo Neves and two anonymous reviewers to whom the authors are thankful. We also thank Arnildo Pott and Geraldo A. Damasceno Júnior for comments on an earlier version of this work and Bruno Scudeiro for making photomicrographs. The authors are grateful for funding from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Mato Grosso (FAPEMAT) [DCR grant number 568838/2017 to C.D.; FAPEMAT grant number 401809/2010-2 to S.S.C.; and CNPq grant number 476020/2013-1 to S.S.C.].

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D’Apolito, C., Rodrigues, M.G., Becker, B.F., Silva-Caminha, S.A.F. (2021). Paleovegetation Inferences and Landscape Evolution in the Pantanal Basin. In: Damasceno-Junior, G.A., Pott, A. (eds) Flora and Vegetation of the Pantanal Wetland. Plant and Vegetation, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83375-6_12

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