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Surface sediment Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) distributions along an ecotonal transect in subarctic Fennoscandia: developing a tool for palaeotemperature reconstructions

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Abstract

We used multivariate statistical techniques to analyse the distributions of surface sediment chironomid assemblages with respect to surface-water temperature, and an additional set of 27 environmental variables, in 30 freshwater lakes of northern Fennoscandia. Our study transect spans boreal coniferous forest to subarctic tundra and includes a steep temperature gradient. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) with forward selection and associated Monte Carlo permutation tests revealed that there were statistically significant (P<0.05) relationships between chironomid distributions and two environmental variables, namely lakewater temperature and maximum lake depth. A constrained CCA with temperature as the only predictor variable suggested that the relationship between lakewater temperature and chironomid composition was sufficiently robust for developing a weighted-averaging (WA) based quantitative inference model that will allow palaeotemperature reconstructions using subfossil chironomid remains preserved in lake sediments.

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  1. Laboratory of Physical Geography, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, Siltavuorenpenger 20 A, FIN-00014, Finland

    Heikki Olander, Atte Korhola & Tom Blom

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  1. Heikki Olander
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  2. Atte Korhola
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Olander, H., Korhola, A. & Blom, T. Surface sediment Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) distributions along an ecotonal transect in subarctic Fennoscandia: developing a tool for palaeotemperature reconstructions. Journal of Paleolimnology 18, 45–59 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007906609155

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