Changing mid-Holocene environmental conditions in Belize – a role for Saharan dust?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Several studies have highlighted the role of the Holocene ‘Green Sahara’ in affecting environmental conditions across the tropics. Expansive Saharan vegetation altered albedo and evapotranspiration, and changed atmospheric circulation, impacting climate over remote regions. For example, mid-Holocene precipitation changes in eastern South America have been linked to the 'Green Sahara'. Sahara vegetation during this period also reduced dust emissions, which are known to play a pivotal role in many environmental processes. Dust carries micronutrients, helps fertilize soils and boosts primary productivity, as evidenced over the Amazon rainforest. During the ‘Green Sahara’ period, vegetation minimized dust emissions, but the effects of the demise of the ‘Green Sahara’ on dust deposition over Mesoamerica have remained unexplored. Here we analyze climate model experiments run under mid-Holocene boundary conditions with and without including ‘Green Sahara’ vegetation, thus preventing or enabling dust emissions, respectively. While changing the vegetation cover does not affect rainfall over Belize during the mid-Holocene, experiments run with dust tracers in the HadGEM2-ES model show that the dust flux over Belize is enhanced if the vegetation over the Sahara is removed, suggesting that the end of the ‘Green Sahara’ might have caused a significant increase in dust and nutrient deposition in Belize.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51528