Latorre, Claudio, Betancourt, Julio L., Rech, Jason A., Quade, Jay, Holmgren, Camille, Placzek, Christa, Maldonado, Antonio J.C., Vuille, Matthias, and Rylander, Kate (2005) Late Quaternary history of the Atacama Desert. In: Smith, M, and Hesse, P, (eds.) 23° S: The Archaeology and Environmental History of the Southern Deserts. National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, pp. 73-90.

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Abstract

Of the major subtropical deserts found in the Southern Hemisphere, the Atacama Desert is the driest. Throughout the Quaternary, the most pervasive climatic infl uence on the desert has been millennial-scale changes in the frequency and seasonality of the scant rainfall, and associated shifts in plant and animal distributions with elevation along the eastern margin of the desert. Over the past six years, we have mapped modern vegetation gradients and developed a number of palaeoenvironmental records, including vegetation histories from fossil rodent middens, groundwater levels from wetland (spring) deposits, and lake levels from shoreline evidence, along a 1200-kilometre transect (16–26°S) in the Atacama Desert. A strength of this palaeoclimate transect has been the ability to apply the same methodologies across broad elevational, latitudinal, climatic, vegetation and hydrological gradients. We are using this transect to reconstruct the histories of key components of the South American tropical (summer) and extratropical (winter) rainfall belts, precisely at those elevations where average annual rainfall wanes to zero. The focus has been on the transition from sparse, shrubby vegetation (known as the prepuna) into absolute desert, an expansive hyperarid terrain that extends from just above the coastal fog zone (approximately 800 metres) to more than 3500 metres in the most arid sectors in the southern Atacama.

Item ID:	20601
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	978-1-876944-30-8
Additional Information:	Copyright © the Authors.
Date Deposited:	06 Sep 2012 07:09
FoR Codes:	04 EARTH SCIENCES > 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience > 040606 Quaternary Environments @ 100%
SEO Codes:	96 ENVIRONMENT > 9603 Climate and Climate Change > 960310 Global Effects of Climate Change and Variability (excl. Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and the South Pacific) @ 100%
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