Holocene vegetation patterns in southern Lithuania indicate astronomical forcing on the millennial and centennial time scales

The Earth’s biota originated and developed to its current complex state through interacting with multilevel physical forcing of our planet’s climate and near and outer space phenomena. In the present study, we focus on the time scale of hundreds to thousands of years in the most recent time interval – the Holocene. Using a pollen paleocommunity dataset from southern Lithuania (Čepkeliai bog) and applying spectral analysis techniques, we tested this record for the presence of statistically significant cyclicities, which can be observed in past solar activity. The time series of non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) scores, which in our case are assumed to reflect temperature variations, and Tsallis entropy-related community compositional diversity estimates q* revealed the presence of cycles on several time scales. The most consistent periodicities are characterized by periods lasting between 201 and 240 years, which is very close to the DeVries solar cycles (208 years). A shorter-term periodicity of 176 years was detected in the NMDS scores that can be putatively linked to the subharmonics of the Gleissberg solar cycle. In addition, periodicities of ≈3,760 and ≈1,880 years were found in both parameters. These periodic patterns could be explained either as originating as a harmonic nonlinear response to precession forcing, or as resulting from the long-term solar activity quasicycles that were reported in previous studies of solar activity proxies.