Southern Patagonian climate the last 51,000 years : Insights from lipid biomarkers and their isotopes

Abstract

Laguna Potrok Aike (LPA) is situated in the core region of the Southern Hemispheric Westerlies (SHW) and provides an exceptional sedimentary archive to investigate the southern Hemisphere mid-latitude climate change over the last 51,000 years. This study gives the opportunity to reconstruct climatic and environmental conditions in an area sensitive to changes in polar and mid-latitude wind fields and hydrological regimes, and it provides insights into the complex interaction of terrestrial, marine and glacial environmental changes on glacial-interglacial timescales. Within the framework of this thesis the temperature and hydrological fluctuations of the maar lake were investigated using organic-geochemical proxies based on microbial membrane lipids (so called GDGTs) and compound-specific isotope analysis (d13C and dD) of plant-wax derived n-alkanes of different origins, respectively.