Pollen analysis of sediment core MD99-2343 from the Mediterranean Sea

Deep-sea pollen records from the Western European margin show that during the Last Glacial period, regional vegetation oscillated between steppe and open forest in response to the millennial scale climate variability, Dansgaard-Oeschger, (D-O) cycles and Heinrich events (HE), and that the magnitude of the forest expansions during D-O warming events was modulated by orbital parameters. We present new well-chronologically constrained high-resolution marine pollen records from the Gulf of Lion and Bay of Biscay documenting the NW Mediterranean and SW France vegetation response during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 4 and 3 (67-33 ka). The vegetation of these regions is reconstructed by pollen analysis. Percentages of the temperate forest, the pioneer trees, Mediterranean taxa, boreal forest, steppe, grassland, heathlands and Mediterranean forest, as well as pollen concentrations recorded at MD99-2343 (40°29'N, 4°01'E, 2391 m water depth) during the Last Glacial period (67-33 ka). We also included the labels for the depth (in cm depth) and the estimated age [ka] of the studied samples.