A submerged pine forest from the early Holocene in the Mecklenburg Lake District, northern Germany

For the first time, evidence of a submerged pine forest from the early Holocene can be documented in a central European lake. Subaquatic tree stumps were discovered in Lake Giesenschlagsee at a depth of between 2 and 5m using scuba divers, side-scan sonar and a remotely operated vehicle. Several erect stumps, anchored to the ground by roots, represent an insitu record of this former forest. Botanical determination revealed the stumps to be Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) with an individual tree age of about 80years. The trees could not be dated by means of dendrochronology, as they are older than the regional reference chronology for pine. Radiocarbon ages from the wood range from 10880 +/- 210 to 10370 +/- 130cal. a BP, which is equivalent to the mid-Preboreal to early Boreal biozones. The trees are rooted in sedge peat, which can be dated to this period as well, using pollen stratigraphical analysis. Tilting of the peat bed by 4m indicates subsidence of the ground due to local dead ice melting, causing the trees to become submerged and preserved for millennia. Together with recently detected Lateglacial insitu tree occurrences in nearby lakes, the submerged pine forest at Giesenschlagsee represents a new and highly promising type of geo-bio-archive for the wider region. Comparable insitu pine remnants occur at some terrestrial (buried setting) and marine (submerged setting) sites in northern central Europe and beyond, but they partly differ in age. In general, the insitu pine finds document shifts of the zonal boreal forest ecosystem during the late Quaternary.