This data publication provides data from burning experiments performed at the Department of Physical Geography, Goethe Univeristy, Frankfurt am Main (Germany). We burned plant specimens from seven graminoid, fifteen forb, and one shrub species from the steppe area in the Dobrogea, Black Sea, Romania, and Konoplyanka, Trans-Urals, Russia. The experiments were conducted to determine the effect of increasing temperatures on the charcoal mass, morphometric characteristics, and morphologies of charred plant material. For this we dried these plants in a desiccator (40°C) for 24 h. Subsequently, following the protocol of Feurdean (2021), we roasted the plant material in a muffle furnace at five district temperature settings: 250, 300, 350, 400, and 450°C. For each temperature subset, remains of individual plant species from the entire plant or as selected plant parts (Table 1), were placed in ceramic crucibles, weighed, then placed into the cold muffle oven covered with a lid to limit oxygen availability and avoid mixing the charred particles. The temperature was gradually raised for one hour, after which it was held constant for a duration of two hours. Crucibles with charred plants were cooled in a desiccator, then weighed to calculate the charred to pre-burning mass ratio. A small part of the charred mass was gently disaggregated with a mortar and pestle to mimic the natural breakage that charcoal particles experience over time through sedimentation processes. The charred and disaggregated sample was then washed through a 125 μm sieve to remove smaller fragments. Photographs of charcoal particles were manually taken at 4X magnification with a digital camera (KERN ODC 241 tablet camera. The charcoal particles and morphometric measurements, including the major (L) and minor (W) axes surface area (A), and perimeter (P) for individual charred particles larger than 150 μm, were automatically determined from these photographs using the algorithm of Feurdean (2021). Subsequently, we calculated the aspect (L/W; W/L) and A/P ratios). These metrics were applied on more than 150 charcoal particles (range between 41 and 508), per sample; the lower number of measurements generally corresponds to samples burnt at high temperatures, where particles were more susceptible to breakage or partial ashing.
The overarching goal of the Drilling Overdeepened Alpine Valleys (DOVE) project will be to date the age and extent of past glaciations. Formerly-glaciated areas are often characterized by deeply incised structures, often filled by Quaternary deposits. These buried troughs and valleys were formed by glacial overdeepening, likely caused by pressurized subglacial meltwater below warm-based glaciers. Results of this drilling campaign, supported by new dating technologies, will further provide critical data on 'how' and 'at which rate' glacial erosion affects such mountain ranges and their foreland. These processes are also of fundamental importance for evaluating the safety of radioactive waste disposal sites, which are planned in areas of former glaciations. Moreover, results of this project will fill gaps in the knowledge of paleoclimate and atmospheric circulation patterns during past glacial epochs and how these patterns affected ice build-up.
The operational data sets include the drill core documentation from the mobile Drilling Information System (mDIS), full round core scans, MSCL data sets, a preliminary core description and the geophysical downhole logging data that were acquired during and subsequent to the drilling operations. All downhole logs and core depth were subject to depth correction to a common depth master (cf. operational report for detailed information). The data are described by two scientific reports, the Operational Report (https://doi.org/10.48440/ICDP.5068.001) and the Explanatory Remarks on the Operational Datasets (https://doi.org/10.48440/ICDP.5068.002).
We provide a globally distributed compilation of published surface temperature proxies for eight Cenozoic time periods that cover the range of paleoclimate states. The proxies have both a marine and terrestrial provenance and are compared to the annual temperature of the same location today. This data is then used to quantify long-term temperature changes on zonal and global levels. When coupled with recent estimates of atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature data constrains the sensitivity of Earth's climate system to perturbation of the radiative balance, with possible implications for the future response to anthropogenic forcing.
The dataset consists of an excel file with eight sheets for the eight selected timeslices, namely,
• mid-Pliocene (3,0 - 3,3 Ma)
• late Miocene (7,2 - 11,6 Ma)
• mid-Miocene (14,7 - 17,0 Ma)
• early Miocene (20,3 - 23,0 Ma)
• early Oligocene (27,8 - 33,9 Ma)
• late Eocene (33,9 - 37,8 Ma)
• middle Eocene (42 - 46 Ma)
• early Eocene (48 - 55 Ma)