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Palynological Reconstruction of the Effects of Holocene Climatic Oscillations and Agricultural History on Soils and Landforms in Luxembourg

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The Luxembourg Gutland Landscape

Abstract

Holocene deposits in valleys and mardels contain valuable pollen records for the reconstruction of the Holocene Landscape evolution, driven by climatic oscillations, forest development and agriculture. Before the Subatlantic, denudation and fluvial discharge were in balance. The Late Holocene displacement of the Quercetum mixtum into a Fageto-Quercetum and the introduction of sedentary agriculture at the expense of forests since the Celtic/RomanTime, stimulated soil erosion. Accelerated soil erosion in the Subatlantic caused deposition of colluvial covers on foot slopes and alluvial beds in primary catchments. In addition, the colluvial deposits in mardels on the Gutland plateau are the result of Subatlantic soil erosion. The pollen records of the deposits on valley floors and in mardels show correlations of Subatlantic climatic oscillations with denudation rate and agricultural management. In particular the Little Ice Age stands out as a period with increased denudation and temporally extension of arable land.

R.T. Slotboom—Deceased

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is honourably dedicated to the late Dr. Ruud Slotboom. The first results of the research of the Gutland mardels have been published by him in his Ph.D. thesis (Slotboom 1963). Fifty years later, triggered by the contrasting results of researchers as Etienne et al. (2011), we decided to return to the Gutland to find new data to contribute to the controversial issue of natural vs anthropogenic mardel genesis. Some preliminary results concerning the mardels on the Strassen marls (pointing to anthropogenic genesis) have been published (Slotboom and van Mourik 2015) short before Ruud passed away in February 2015. The first author of this chapter decided to finish the Gutland mardel study with new diagrams of the mardels on the Keuper marls and to apply archaeometrical tests to correlate mardel deposits and Roman pottery.

We express gratitude to the master students Hubert Mettivier Meijer, Frans Poeteray and Gijs Rering for the realization of their research master projects dedicated to the palynological studies of Luxembourg. We are grateful to Robert Colbach (Geological Service of Luxembourg), Tom Scholtes (forestry Medernach) and Marc Hoffman (forestry Beaufort) for their scientific advices about mardel genesis. Finally we like to thank Jan van Arkel (IBED, University of Amsterdam) for the production of the digital illustrations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park, PO box 94062, 1090, GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    J. M. van Mourik & R. T. Slotboom

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  1. J. M. van Mourik
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  2. R. T. Slotboom
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Correspondence to J. M. van Mourik .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    A. M. Kooijman

  2. Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    L.H. Cammeraat

  3. Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    A.C. Seijmonsbergen

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van Mourik, J.M., Slotboom, R.T. (2018). Palynological Reconstruction of the Effects of Holocene Climatic Oscillations and Agricultural History on Soils and Landforms in Luxembourg. In: Kooijman, A., Cammeraat, L., Seijmonsbergen, A. (eds) The Luxembourg Gutland Landscape. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65543-7_3

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