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Title: An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories

Abstract

Changes in lake status are often interpreted as palaeoclimate indicators due to their dependence on precipitation and evaporation. The Global Lake Status Database (GLSDB) has since long provided a standardised synopsis of qualitative lake status over the last 30,000 14C years. Potential sources of uncertainty however are not recorded in the GLSDB. Here we present an updated and improved relational-database framework that incorporates uncertainty in both chronology and the interpretation of palaeoenvironmental data. The database uses peer-reviewed palaeolimnological studies to produce a consensus on qualitative lake-status histories, whose chronologies are revised and standardized through the recalibration of radiocarbon dates and the application of Bayesian age-depth modelling for stratigraphic archives. Quantitative information on absolute water-level elevation is preserved if available from geomorphological sources. We also propose a new probabilistic analytical framework that accounts for these uncertainties to reconstruct synoptic, integrated environmental signals. The process is based on a Monte Carlo algorithm that iteratively samples individual lake-status histories within the limits of their uncertainties to produce many possible scenarios. We then use Recursively-Subtracted Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis to extract dominant patterns of lake-status variability from these scenarios. As a proof of concept, we apply this framework to 67 sites in eastern andmore » southern Africa whose lake-status histories cover part of the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. We show that, despite the sometimes large temporal and interpretation uncertainties, and the inclusion of highly discontinuous lake-status time series, identifying the major known millennial-scale climatic phases during the last 20,000 years is possible. Our framework was also able to identify an antiphased response between the lake basins in eastern and interior southern Africa to these changes. Here, we propose that our new database and methodology framework serves as a template for efficient lake-status data synthesis, encourages the incorporation of lake-status data in palaeoclimate syntheses, and expands the possibilities for the use of such data in the evaluation of climate models.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5]
  1. Ghent Univ. (Belgium); Columbia Univ., Palisades, NY (United States). Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium)
  2. University of Lausanne. Lausanne (Switzerland); Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Bonn (Germany)
  3. Univ. of Oxford (United Kingdom)
  4. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Reading (United Kingdom)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); Research Foundation Flanders (FWO); Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF); Trapnell Fund, Environmental Change Institute; National Science Foundation (NSF); European Research Council (ERC)
OSTI Identifier:
1829595
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-829030
Journal ID: ISSN 0277-3791; 1044790
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC52-07NA27344; 694481
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Quaternary Science Reviews
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 258; Journal ID: ISSN 0277-3791
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
58 GEOSCIENCES; Lake status; Lake level; Palaeolimnology; Palaeoclimatology; Relational database; Data uncertainty; Monte Carlo algorithm; Recursively-subtracted empirical orthogonal function; Africa; Quaternary

Citation Formats

De Cort, Gijs, Chevalier, Manuel, Burrough, Sallie L., Chen, Christine Y., and Harrison, Sandy P. An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories. United States: N. p., 2021. Web. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870.
De Cort, Gijs, Chevalier, Manuel, Burrough, Sallie L., Chen, Christine Y., & Harrison, Sandy P. An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870
De Cort, Gijs, Chevalier, Manuel, Burrough, Sallie L., Chen, Christine Y., and Harrison, Sandy P. Fri . "An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1829595.
@article{osti_1829595,
title = {An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories},
author = {De Cort, Gijs and Chevalier, Manuel and Burrough, Sallie L. and Chen, Christine Y. and Harrison, Sandy P.},
abstractNote = {Changes in lake status are often interpreted as palaeoclimate indicators due to their dependence on precipitation and evaporation. The Global Lake Status Database (GLSDB) has since long provided a standardised synopsis of qualitative lake status over the last 30,000 14C years. Potential sources of uncertainty however are not recorded in the GLSDB. Here we present an updated and improved relational-database framework that incorporates uncertainty in both chronology and the interpretation of palaeoenvironmental data. The database uses peer-reviewed palaeolimnological studies to produce a consensus on qualitative lake-status histories, whose chronologies are revised and standardized through the recalibration of radiocarbon dates and the application of Bayesian age-depth modelling for stratigraphic archives. Quantitative information on absolute water-level elevation is preserved if available from geomorphological sources. We also propose a new probabilistic analytical framework that accounts for these uncertainties to reconstruct synoptic, integrated environmental signals. The process is based on a Monte Carlo algorithm that iteratively samples individual lake-status histories within the limits of their uncertainties to produce many possible scenarios. We then use Recursively-Subtracted Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis to extract dominant patterns of lake-status variability from these scenarios. As a proof of concept, we apply this framework to 67 sites in eastern and southern Africa whose lake-status histories cover part of the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. We show that, despite the sometimes large temporal and interpretation uncertainties, and the inclusion of highly discontinuous lake-status time series, identifying the major known millennial-scale climatic phases during the last 20,000 years is possible. Our framework was also able to identify an antiphased response between the lake basins in eastern and interior southern Africa to these changes. Here, we propose that our new database and methodology framework serves as a template for efficient lake-status data synthesis, encourages the incorporation of lake-status data in palaeoclimate syntheses, and expands the possibilities for the use of such data in the evaluation of climate models.},
doi = {10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106870},
journal = {Quaternary Science Reviews},
number = ,
volume = 258,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Mar 19 00:00:00 EDT 2021},
month = {Fri Mar 19 00:00:00 EDT 2021}
}

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