Bernd Zolitschka
Biographic Data
| ID | 2738138 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bernd Zolitschka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bernd |
| FAMILY NAME | Zolitschka |
| SIGNATURE | ZOLITSCHKA B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bremen |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8256-0420 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Shortly before the LGM − A new very late Gravettian find complex at Kammern-Grubgraben
A cold case from the last Glacial Maximum
Remains of at least 72 skeletal elements and a tusk of one woolly mammoth were unearthed from an Upper Würmian palaeo-channel fill and adjacent overbank deposits in southeastern Germany. The skeletal remains are from a large but not yet fully grown individual. Cut marks on several ribs indicate human involvement. However, archaeological traces, such as artefacts or settlement remains, were not recovered. The individual was radiocarbon-dated to 26…
A cold case from the last glacial maximum
A partial skeleton of a mammoth was found that has been dated to the Last Glacial Maximum. • The mammoth was deposited in a former pond and on its banks. • The pollen record demonstrates that the mammoth died during cold stadial conditions. • Collagen isotope values agree with other mammoth finds from the so-called mammoth steppe. One tusk and remains of at least 72 skeletal elements of woolly mammoth were unearthed from deposits of a palaeo-chan…
Contribution to the European Pollen Database in Neotoma
Although high-resolution palynological analyses of the Holzmaar sediment record were completed in the late 1980s, biostratigraphic interpretations of climatic developments and the settlement history are still lacking.Apart from an unpublished project report to the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Usinger and Wolf 1991), only a summarizing diagram of a subsection within a regional comparison of palynological and archaeological evidences for cultu…
Ecological responses to solar forcing during the Homerian Climate Anomaly recorded by varved sediments from Holzmaar, Germany
Features like solar cyclicities and trends as well as grand solar minima are used to attribute natural climate variability to solar forcing on decadal to millennial time scales. Here we focus on ecological responses of a Grand Solar Minimum on annually- laminated lake sediments from Holzmaar (Germany) covering the Homeric Climate Anomaly (HCA). Diatom assemblages and pigments of purple sulphur bacteria (Bphe a) analysed at decadal resolution docu…
Human impact on vegetation at Lago di Vedana (Dolomites, Northern Italy) during the last seven centuries
Studying the legacies of past human-environment interactions is essential for understanding current landscape and biodiversity patterns. Human influences on past terrestrial and aquatic vegetation are reconstructed based on palynological analysis conducted on a sediment core from Lago di Vedana (Province of Belluno, Northern Italy). This study represents the first pollen record from the Dolomitic lowlands with varying anthropogenic influences thr…
Varves and mass-movement deposits record distinctly different sedimentation dynamics since the late glacial (Lake Szurpiły, northeastern Poland)
The sedimentological and geochemical characteristics of sediments from Lake Szurpiły (northeastern Poland) can be used as a record of mass movement and climate dynamics since the Allerød. Late-glacial sediments suggest enhanced runoff conditions in the catchment after the retreat of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, while Holocene varved sediments are interrupted by mass-movement deposits (MMDs). We identified 85 thin ( 1-m-thick MMD type 2) consists o…
Testing lake-level reconstructions based on rock magnetic proxies for the sediment record of Laguna Cháltel (Patagonia, Argentina)
This study was carried out on sediment cores collected with a gravity corer from Laguna Cháltel, an almost circular crater lake located in Patagonia, Argentina (49.9°S, 71°W). The main magnetic carrier was Ti-magnetite in the pseudo–single domain range. A model using magnetic grain size and concentration, previously applied to Laguna Potrok Aike to infer lake-level changes, was used for Laguna Cháltel. The main requirement to apply the model is u…
Annually Laminated Lake Sediments—Recent Progress
The collection of papers entitled “Annually Laminated Lake Sediments” illustrates the recent progress made in varved sediment research and highlights the variety of methodological approaches and research directions used. The contributions cover the monitoring of modern sediment fluxes using sediment traps, geochronological and sedimentological analyses of varves, multi-proxy investigations, including geochemical and biological proxies, as well as…
Current perspectives on the capabilities of high resolution XRF core scanners
High resolution XRF core scanners
XRF scanning of discrete samples – A chemostratigraphic approach exemplified for loess-paleosol sequences from the Island of Susak, Croatia
Southern Hemispheric Westerlies control sedimentary processes of Laguna Azul (south-eastern Patagonia, Argentina)
Multiproxy investigations of lacustrine sediments from Laguna Azul (52 °S) document multi-millennial Holocene influences of Southern Hemispheric Westerlies (SHW) on the hydroclimatic variability of south-eastern Patagonia. During the last 4000 years, this hydroclimatic variability is overprinted by centennial warm/dry periods. A cool/wet period from 11,600 to 10,100 cal. BP is succeeded by an early Holocene dry period (10,100–8300 cal. BP) with a…
Periodic 1.5 ka climate variations during MIS 2 in the belt of Southern Hemispheric westerlies
Lacustrine sediments retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike in the framework of the Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project (PASADO) offer the possibility to investigate climate variations of the past ~51 cal ka BP in Southern Hemispheric midlatitudes, Argentinean Patagonia. This study focuses on short-term cyclicities in the Ca and magnetic susceptibility data sets between 51 and 15 cal ka BP. The record yields a climate pattern with …
New insights into paleoenvironmental changes in Laguna Potrok Aike, southern Patagonia, since the Late Pleistocene
A series of long sediment cores was retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike, Southern Patagonia, within the framework of PASADO (Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project), an ICDP (International Continental Scientific Drilling Program) lake drilling project. This maar lake, located at 52°S, 70°W in the Province of Santa Cruz (Argentina), in the southernmost continental area of the world, is one of the few permanent lakes in the region, p…
Historical soil erosion and land-use change during the last two millennia recorded in lake sediments of Frickenhauser See, northern Bavaria, central Germany
Based on palaeolimnological investigations on a 1275 cm long lacustrine sediment record, sediment yields (SY) and denudation rates (DR) for the last 2000 years were reconstructed from Frickenhauser See, a small lake in central Germany. SY and DR generally correspond with the human land-use history derived from pollen analysis and reveal a drastic interruption of natural processes starting in the eleventh century AD. SY increased over 350-fold fro…
Lacustrine and marine archives of environmental variability across South America
Lateglacial and Holocene wet—dry cycles in southern Patagonia
A high-resolution multiproxy geochemical approach was applied to the sediments of Laguna Potrok Aike in an attempt to reconstruct moist and dry periods during the past 16 000 years in southeastern Patagonia. The age—depth model is inferred from AMS 14 C dates and tephrochronology, and suggests moist conditions during the Lateglacial and early Holocene (16 000—8700 cal. BP) interrupted by drier conditions before the beginning of the Holocene (13 2…
Environmental change and fire history of southern Patagonia (Argentina) during the last five centuries
Human and climatic impact on the environment as derived from colluvial, fluvial and lacustrine archives—examples from the Bronze Age to the Migration period, Germany
Abrupt environmental oscillations during the Early Weichselian recorded at Lago Grande di Monticchio, southern Italy
Circum-Mediterranean lake records as archives of climatic and human history
AMS Radiocarbon and Varve Chronology from the Annually Laminated Sediment Record of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany
The Holocene varve chronology of annually laminated sediment sequences from Lake Meerfelder Maar agree for most of the record with dendro-calibrated accelerator mass spectronomy radiocarbon dates from the same site. Only between 9710 and 9950 cal BP does an offset of 240 yr appear between both data sets. At this position, a micro-disturbance in the varve succession has been detected by thin section analyses and was quantified in terms of missing …
Radiocarbon Dating of Varve Chronologies
During the last decade, several radiocarbon-dated varve chronologies have been produced. The main goal at first was the extension of the 14 C calibration curve beyond 10,000 BP. This paper aims to discuss varve chronologies of Soppensee and Holzmaar Lakes. Although both chronologies encountered problems, high-resolution 14 C dating and relative varve time have been obtained for events during the Late Glacial
Rapid environmental changes in southern Europe during the last glacial period
Radiocarbon Age of the Laacher See Tephra
The Laacher Sec Tephra (LST) layer provides a unique and invaluable time marker in European sediments with increasing importance because it occurs just before the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cold event. As the YD begins ca . 200 calendar years after the LST was deposited, accurate determination of the radiocarbon age of this ash layer will lead to a more accurate age assignment for the beginning of the YD. On the basis of 12 terrestrial plant…
Historical soil erosion and land-use change during the last two millennia recorded in lake sediments of Frickenhauser See, northern Bavaria, central Germany
Based on palaeolimnological investigations on a 1275 cm long lacustrine sediment record, sediment yields (SY) and denudation rates (DR) for the last 2000 years were reconstructed from Frickenhauser See, a small lake in central Germany. SY and DR generally correspond with the human land-use history derived from pollen analysis and reveal a drastic interruption of natural processes starting in the eleventh century AD. SY increased over 350-fold fro…
Lateglacial and Holocene wet—dry cycles in southern Patagonia
A high-resolution multiproxy geochemical approach was applied to the sediments of Laguna Potrok Aike in an attempt to reconstruct moist and dry periods during the past 16 000 years in southeastern Patagonia. The age—depth model is inferred from AMS 14 C dates and tephrochronology, and suggests moist conditions during the Lateglacial and early Holocene (16 000—8700 cal. BP) interrupted by drier conditions before the beginning of the Holocene (13 2…
AMS Radiocarbon and Varve Chronology from the Annually Laminated Sediment Record of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany
The Holocene varve chronology of annually laminated sediment sequences from Lake Meerfelder Maar agree for most of the record with dendro-calibrated accelerator mass spectronomy radiocarbon dates from the same site. Only between 9710 and 9950 cal BP does an offset of 240 yr appear between both data sets. At this position, a micro-disturbance in the varve succession has been detected by thin section analyses and was quantified in terms of missing …
System dynamics and environmental change
The idea that much environmental information may be gained by identifying underlying environmen tal system behaviours is examined. Six categories of system behaviour for changes between and within steady-states are identified: disorder maximization; self-organization; linear process-response; stochastic; self- organized criticality; and chaotic. In practical terms, predictability only exists for linear behaviour. Simple frequency distributions of…
New insights into paleoenvironmental changes in Laguna Potrok Aike, southern Patagonia, since the Late Pleistocene
A series of long sediment cores was retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike, Southern Patagonia, within the framework of PASADO (Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project), an ICDP (International Continental Scientific Drilling Program) lake drilling project. This maar lake, located at 52°S, 70°W in the Province of Santa Cruz (Argentina), in the southernmost continental area of the world, is one of the few permanent lakes in the region, p…
Southern Hemispheric Westerlies control sedimentary processes of Laguna Azul (south-eastern Patagonia, Argentina)
Multiproxy investigations of lacustrine sediments from Laguna Azul (52 °S) document multi-millennial Holocene influences of Southern Hemispheric Westerlies (SHW) on the hydroclimatic variability of south-eastern Patagonia. During the last 4000 years, this hydroclimatic variability is overprinted by centennial warm/dry periods. A cool/wet period from 11,600 to 10,100 cal. BP is succeeded by an early Holocene dry period (10,100–8300 cal. BP) with a…
C Ages of Terrestrial Macrofossils from Lago Grande Di Monticchio (Italy)
Lago Grande di Monticchio (Italy) contains long sedimentary records of >75 ka (Zolitschka and Negendank 1996). In a joint European project (Creer and Thouveny 1996), vegetation history and climatic changes for this part of the Mediterranean have been reconstructed (Watts, Allen and Huntley 1996; Watts et al. 1996). In addition to the time scale based on annual laminations and sedimentation rate, tephra layers and pollen spectra, radiocarbon datin…
Radiocarbon Dating of Varve Chronologies
During the last decade, several radiocarbon-dated varve chronologies have been produced. The main goal at first was the extension of the 14 C calibration curve beyond 10,000 BP. This paper aims to discuss varve chronologies of Soppensee and Holzmaar Lakes. Although both chronologies encountered problems, high-resolution 14 C dating and relative varve time have been obtained for events during the Late Glacial
Radiocarbon Age of the Laacher See Tephra
The Laacher Sec Tephra (LST) layer provides a unique and invaluable time marker in European sediments with increasing importance because it occurs just before the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cold event. As the YD begins ca . 200 calendar years after the LST was deposited, accurate determination of the radiocarbon age of this ash layer will lead to a more accurate age assignment for the beginning of the YD. On the basis of 12 terrestrial plant…
C Ages of Terrestrial Macrofossils from Lago Grande Di Monticchio (Italy)
Lago Grande di Monticchio (Italy) contains long sedimentary records of >75 ka (Zolitschka and Negendank 1996). In a joint European project (Creer and Thouveny 1996), vegetation history and climatic changes for this part of the Mediterranean have been reconstructed (Watts, Allen and Huntley 1996; Watts et al. 1996). In addition to the time scale based on annual laminations and sedimentation rate, tephra layers and pollen spectra, radiocarbon datin…
Rapid environmental changes in southern Europe during the last glacial period
System dynamics and environmental change
The idea that much environmental information may be gained by identifying underlying environmen tal system behaviours is examined. Six categories of system behaviour for changes between and within steady-states are identified: disorder maximization; self-organization; linear process-response; stochastic; self- organized criticality; and chaotic. In practical terms, predictability only exists for linear behaviour. Simple frequency distributions of…
Abrupt environmental oscillations during the Early Weichselian recorded at Lago Grande di Monticchio, southern Italy
Circum-Mediterranean lake records as archives of climatic and human history
AMS Radiocarbon and Varve Chronology from the Annually Laminated Sediment Record of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany
The Holocene varve chronology of annually laminated sediment sequences from Lake Meerfelder Maar agree for most of the record with dendro-calibrated accelerator mass spectronomy radiocarbon dates from the same site. Only between 9710 and 9950 cal BP does an offset of 240 yr appear between both data sets. At this position, a micro-disturbance in the varve succession has been detected by thin section analyses and was quantified in terms of missing …
Radiocarbon Dating of Varve Chronologies
During the last decade, several radiocarbon-dated varve chronologies have been produced. The main goal at first was the extension of the 14 C calibration curve beyond 10,000 BP. This paper aims to discuss varve chronologies of Soppensee and Holzmaar Lakes. Although both chronologies encountered problems, high-resolution 14 C dating and relative varve time have been obtained for events during the Late Glacial
Human and climatic impact on the environment as derived from colluvial, fluvial and lacustrine archives—examples from the Bronze Age to the Migration period, Germany
Environmental change and fire history of southern Patagonia (Argentina) during the last five centuries
Lacustrine and marine archives of environmental variability across South America
Lateglacial and Holocene wet—dry cycles in southern Patagonia
A high-resolution multiproxy geochemical approach was applied to the sediments of Laguna Potrok Aike in an attempt to reconstruct moist and dry periods during the past 16 000 years in southeastern Patagonia. The age—depth model is inferred from AMS 14 C dates and tephrochronology, and suggests moist conditions during the Lateglacial and early Holocene (16 000—8700 cal. BP) interrupted by drier conditions before the beginning of the Holocene (13 2…
Historical soil erosion and land-use change during the last two millennia recorded in lake sediments of Frickenhauser See, northern Bavaria, central Germany
Based on palaeolimnological investigations on a 1275 cm long lacustrine sediment record, sediment yields (SY) and denudation rates (DR) for the last 2000 years were reconstructed from Frickenhauser See, a small lake in central Germany. SY and DR generally correspond with the human land-use history derived from pollen analysis and reveal a drastic interruption of natural processes starting in the eleventh century AD. SY increased over 350-fold fro…
New insights into paleoenvironmental changes in Laguna Potrok Aike, southern Patagonia, since the Late Pleistocene
A series of long sediment cores was retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike, Southern Patagonia, within the framework of PASADO (Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project), an ICDP (International Continental Scientific Drilling Program) lake drilling project. This maar lake, located at 52°S, 70°W in the Province of Santa Cruz (Argentina), in the southernmost continental area of the world, is one of the few permanent lakes in the region, p…
Periodic 1.5 ka climate variations during MIS 2 in the belt of Southern Hemispheric westerlies
Lacustrine sediments retrieved from Laguna Potrok Aike in the framework of the Potrok Aike Maar Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project (PASADO) offer the possibility to investigate climate variations of the past ~51 cal ka BP in Southern Hemispheric midlatitudes, Argentinean Patagonia. This study focuses on short-term cyclicities in the Ca and magnetic susceptibility data sets between 51 and 15 cal ka BP. The record yields a climate pattern with …
XRF scanning of discrete samples – A chemostratigraphic approach exemplified for loess-paleosol sequences from the Island of Susak, Croatia
Southern Hemispheric Westerlies control sedimentary processes of Laguna Azul (south-eastern Patagonia, Argentina)
Multiproxy investigations of lacustrine sediments from Laguna Azul (52 °S) document multi-millennial Holocene influences of Southern Hemispheric Westerlies (SHW) on the hydroclimatic variability of south-eastern Patagonia. During the last 4000 years, this hydroclimatic variability is overprinted by centennial warm/dry periods. A cool/wet period from 11,600 to 10,100 cal. BP is succeeded by an early Holocene dry period (10,100–8300 cal. BP) with a…
Current perspectives on the capabilities of high resolution XRF core scanners
High resolution XRF core scanners
Varves and mass-movement deposits record distinctly different sedimentation dynamics since the late glacial (Lake Szurpiły, northeastern Poland)
The sedimentological and geochemical characteristics of sediments from Lake Szurpiły (northeastern Poland) can be used as a record of mass movement and climate dynamics since the Allerød. Late-glacial sediments suggest enhanced runoff conditions in the catchment after the retreat of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, while Holocene varved sediments are interrupted by mass-movement deposits (MMDs). We identified 85 thin ( 1-m-thick MMD type 2) consists o…
Testing lake-level reconstructions based on rock magnetic proxies for the sediment record of Laguna Cháltel (Patagonia, Argentina)
This study was carried out on sediment cores collected with a gravity corer from Laguna Cháltel, an almost circular crater lake located in Patagonia, Argentina (49.9°S, 71°W). The main magnetic carrier was Ti-magnetite in the pseudo–single domain range. A model using magnetic grain size and concentration, previously applied to Laguna Potrok Aike to infer lake-level changes, was used for Laguna Cháltel. The main requirement to apply the model is u…
Annually Laminated Lake Sediments—Recent Progress
The collection of papers entitled “Annually Laminated Lake Sediments” illustrates the recent progress made in varved sediment research and highlights the variety of methodological approaches and research directions used. The contributions cover the monitoring of modern sediment fluxes using sediment traps, geochronological and sedimentological analyses of varves, multi-proxy investigations, including geochemical and biological proxies, as well as…
Human impact on vegetation at Lago di Vedana (Dolomites, Northern Italy) during the last seven centuries
Studying the legacies of past human-environment interactions is essential for understanding current landscape and biodiversity patterns. Human influences on past terrestrial and aquatic vegetation are reconstructed based on palynological analysis conducted on a sediment core from Lago di Vedana (Province of Belluno, Northern Italy). This study represents the first pollen record from the Dolomitic lowlands with varying anthropogenic influences thr…
Ecological responses to solar forcing during the Homerian Climate Anomaly recorded by varved sediments from Holzmaar, Germany
Features like solar cyclicities and trends as well as grand solar minima are used to attribute natural climate variability to solar forcing on decadal to millennial time scales. Here we focus on ecological responses of a Grand Solar Minimum on annually- laminated lake sediments from Holzmaar (Germany) covering the Homeric Climate Anomaly (HCA). Diatom assemblages and pigments of purple sulphur bacteria (Bphe a) analysed at decadal resolution docu…
Contribution to the European Pollen Database in Neotoma
Although high-resolution palynological analyses of the Holzmaar sediment record were completed in the late 1980s, biostratigraphic interpretations of climatic developments and the settlement history are still lacking.Apart from an unpublished project report to the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Usinger and Wolf 1991), only a summarizing diagram of a subsection within a regional comparison of palynological and archaeological evidences for cultu…
Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (28 works) · Geography (18 works) · Physical geography (18 works) · Geology (16 works) · Holocene (14 works) · Sediment (14 works) · Paleontology (13 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (12 works) · Glacial period (10 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (9 works)