A 5500-year proxy-climate and vegetation record from blanket mire at Talla Moss, Borders, Scotland

A monolith of peat taken from an upland blanket mire at Talla Moss, southern Scotland, was subjected to peat humification and pollen analyses to produce both a proxy-climate record and a vegetational history covering the last 5500 years. While the pear showed little visible stratigraphy, with no intimation of major peat humification changes, colorimetric data indicate a markedly oscillatory climate record, which is apparently largely independent of, or out of phase with, major vegetational changes. The raw data imply particular wet shifts in climate at c. 3455 BP, c. 2600 BP, c. 1930 BP, c. 1095 BP, with a markedly wet (or cool and wet) episode commencing at c. 540 BP. (These are central age estimates, and should not be regarded as precise dates for the inferred climate shifts.) Other wet shifts apparently date from c. 3070 BP, c. 2265 BP and c. 1700 BP, although the first of these corresponds with pollen evidence for significant prehistoric human activity in the locality. Spectral analysis of the peat humification data, when expressed on an interpolated calibrated age-scale, suggests a cycle of c. 210 years; this is dependent on the accuracy of the radiocarbon chronology and should be treated with caution. The upland site is amenable to tephrochronology, which, if also applied to ombrotrophic mire sites elsewhere, might then permit more precise correlation and comparisons of proxy-climate data between sites.