Contribution to the European Pollen Database in Neotoma: a high-resolution pollen record from varved sediments of Holzmaar, West Eifel Volcanic Field (Germany)
Sediments from Holzmaar are one of the best studied Late Quaternary environmental records from lakes in Germany. These sediments are ideal for palynological investigations for several reasons: (1) the record is dominated by regional pollen rain due to an almost missing telmatic zone; (2) the sediment thickness of approximately 9 m for the Holocene record allows a high subsampling resolution; (3) the seasonally anoxic or even meromictic hypolimnion guarantees no mixing (bioturbation) of the sediments; and (4) the annually laminated (varved) sediments provide a precise chronology in calendar years. Consequently, palynological analyses allow a decadal temporal resolution, are based on at least 600 pollen grains per sample and allow the calculation of pollen influx on a reliable time scale. When studies of maar lakes in the West Eifel Volcanic Field began in the early 1980s (Negendank et al. 1990), no adequate coring technique was available to obtain high-quality and undisturbed sediments from water depth of 20 m or more. It was the late Hartmut Usinger who engineered an advanced version of the Livingston piston corer. This rod-operated “Usinger Sonde” with a thin-walled steel barrel replacing the liner was capable of recovering 1 or 2 m long sediment sections of up to 80 mm in diameter (Mingram et al. 2007). The “Usinger Sonde” was used at Holzmaar for the first time.
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