Vegetation and climate in Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes since 210 ka: new insights from marine and terrestrial pollen records from New Zealand

Paleo-vegetation records developed from marine sedimentary sequences offer considerable potential for examining changes in terrestrial climate beyond the range of 14C dating because they can be independently dated by δ18O stratigraphy. Here we present the first pollen record of vegetation from a marine core site in the Tasman Sea, TAN0513-14 (42°18′S, 169°53′E), ∼110 km west of New Zealand's South Island. An independent chronology provided by correlating the Globigerina bulloides δ18O record at TAN0513-14 to a global isotope stack shows that the record extends back to 210 ka. Glacial to interglacial changes in palynomorph content are characterised by shrub and podocarp-broadleaf forest taxa respectively and are correlated with similar changes in the ca 150 kyr-long terrestrial pollen record from Okarito Pakihi (bog), 110 km to the south southeast. Both records are placed on the same timescale by matching variations in Dacrydium cupressinum and Fuscospora between sites, with a unique tie point provided by the ca 25.4 ka Kawakawa Tephra. Our Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude vegetation records show forest extent is greatest during periods of low ice volume, high mean annual sea surface temperature (MASST) and anti-phased with local insolation intensity. However, there are several features not attributable to changes in mean annual temperature. First, a fundamental change in forest composition occurred at Termination II (TII), with a loss of southern beech (Nothofagus) from the study area. Second, the amplitude of MASST change through MIS 5 is not reflected in corresponding changes in forest extent, suggesting other feature(s) of regional climate (seasonality, frostiness, ice cover) exert important controls over vegetation patterns at these latitudes.