Journal of Paleolimnology

Valero-Garcés, Blas; Grosjean, Martin; Schwalb, Antje; Geyh, Mebus; Messerli, Bruno; Kelts, Kerry

doi: 10.1007/BF00173268pmid: N/A

Sedimentological, mineralogical and geochemical analyses of sediment cores from 9 m-deep, saline Laguna Miscanti, Chile (23 ° 44′S, 67 °46′W, 4140 m a.s.l.) together with high-resolution seismic profiles provide a mid to late Holocene time series of regional environmental change in the Atacama Altiplano constrained by 210Pb and conventional 14C dating. The mid Holocene was the most arid interval since the last glacial maximum, as documented by subaerial exposure and formation of hardgrounds on a playa surface. Extremely low lake levels during the mid Holocene appear consistent with lower effective moisture recorded at other sites along the Altiplano and in the Amazon Basin. Termination of this arid period represented a major shift in the regional environmental dynamics and inaugurated modern atmospheric conditions. The cores show a progressive upward increase in effective moisture interrupted by numerous century-scale drier periods of various intensities and durations that characterize a fluctuating late Holocene climate. In spite of chronological uncertainties, the major environmental changes seem to correlate with the available paleorecords from the region providing a coherent account of effective moisture variability in the tropical highlands of South America.

Huber, James

doi: 10.1007/BF00173269pmid: N/A

As part of a multidisciplinary investigation of the Misiano archaeological site, pollen and nonsiliceous algae were recovered from a 262 cm core from Gegoka Lake, Lake County, Minnesota. The palynomorph assemblage from Gegoka Lake records changes in local and regional vegetational and lake productivity over the past 10 000 years. Pollen spectra indicate that vegetation progressed from a shrub parkland/open conifer forest, to a spruce-pine forest, to a mixed conifer-hardwood forest. Pinus banksiana/resinosa is replaced by Pinus strobus about 7000 years ago. A small rise in Gramineae in the upper 17.5 cm of the core is attributed to the expansion of wild rice (Zizania aquatica) in Gegoka Lake. Four cycles of nutrient enrichment are indicated by the Pediastrum and Scenedesmus maxima in the nonsiliceous algae record. Oscillations in the nonsiliceous algae abundance probably result from changing environmental and/or limnologic conditions. The decline in nonsiliceous algae in the upper 57.5 cm of the core suggests that there has been an apparent shift to more nutrient poor conditions in Gegoka Lake in the recent past.

Mandryk, Carole

doi: 10.1007/BF00173270pmid: N/A

Stratigraphic pollen analysis done on sediment cores from two sites in the upper North Saskatchewan drainage basin of the eastern slopes foothills of the Rocky Mountains in west central Alberta, Canada combined with sedimentological data provide a local vegetational and environmental history. Radiocarbon AMS dates provide a chronology back to 17960 BP. Reconstruction and interpretation of the local pollen zones includes reevaluation of steppe and grassland as analogs for full- and late-glacial vegetation. Regional vegetation from c. 17960 to 16 100 BP is interpreted as an extremely cold semi-arid Artemisia steppe, the vegetation c. 16 100 to 11 900 BP as an Artemisia-Betula shrubland, and the vegetation c. 11 900–10 200 BP as a Picea woodland, in an environment characterized by consistently arid and windy conditions. This reconstruction emphasizes the significance of aridity, as opposed to simply low temperatures, as the critical factor in determining the late Quaternary vegetation of Alberta.

Rueger, Bruce; Wallmenich, Theodore

doi: 10.1007/BF00173271pmid: N/A

The wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda reefs in 1609 initiated continuous habitation by humans on these islands. Colonization brought significant changes to the native and endemic flora of Bermuda. Original floral diversity was low, due to the effects of isolation and lack of previous anthropogenic influences. Two dominant endemic components of the flora, Bermuda cedar (Juniperus bermudiana) and Bermuda palmetto (Sabal bermudana), were extensively utilized by the colonists. Cedar was used for housing, furniture, shipbuilding and export, while the palmetto was used for roof thatch, basketry, food and drink. Exploitation of these species occurred to such extent that the General Laws of Bermuda included resolutions protecting them as early as 1622. Later, in the period between 1946 and 1951, two accidentally introduced scale insects eliminated 95% of the existing cedar population.

Björse, Gisela; Bradshaw, Richard; Michelson, Daniel

doi: 10.1007/BF00173272pmid: N/A

A method was developed to construct maps of former forest types based on regional pollen data in southern Sweden. The considered species were Alnus, Betula, Carpinus, Corylus, Fagus, Fraxinus, Juniperus, Picea, Pinus, Populus, Quercus, Salix, Tilia and Ulmus. A network of 37 regional pollen sites with high data quality from lakes and peat deposits were selected from Sweden south of 60 ° N. Pollen percentage values were calculated and converted into estimates of tree composition. For controlling the reliability of the reconstruction, the estimates from the core-tops were compared with present day forest inventory data, and local pollen diagrams were compared with the regional pollen diagrams. An inverse distance weighted interpolation algorithm was used to generate maps for each tree species distribution at 2000 BP, 1500 BP, 1000 BP, 500 BP and 0 BP. A supervised classification routine was implemented to generate nine different forest types common to the five studied time intervals. The maps show that the amounts and patterns of distribution of the species and the forest types have varied in a significant but systematic manner through time. The changes are due to human activities, migrational patterns and changes in climate. These maps will be of value as a basis for future landscape planning, forestry and conservation of biodiversity.

Clark, James; Hussey, Tristram; Royall, P.

doi: 10.1007/BF00173273pmid: N/A

We present a method for identifying analogs for past fire regimes and use it to assess similarity between late Quaternary fire regimes in northern Wisconsin and central New York and a reference set of charcoal series from just prior to presettlement time. The analog method is based on comparisons of distributions of charcoal accumulation rates from annually laminated sediments using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov two-sample D statistic (D). D is a nonparametric statistic expressing the difference between distributions that does not require assumptions concerning the shape of the distributions (e.g. normality, homoscedasticity) and it summarizes differences in a single index. Our study consists of (i) mapping D values obtained by comparisons between pairs of ‘reference’ charcoal series from the immediate presettlement (calibration) and (ii) identifying possible presettlement analogs from this reference set for Late Quaternary charcoal distributions. Our calibration analysis identified geographic transitions in charcoal transition that were much steeper than apparent from pollen data. Otherwise, geographic patterns in presettlement charcoal and pollen are comparable, including a group of oak/hardwood forest sites in Wisconsin, central Ontario, and New York having similar values, and another group of mostly northern hardwood/hemlock sites in Pennsylvania and Maine. Application to charcoal series dated after 11 000 yr BP at Wisconsin and New York suggests that fire regimes may have been different from those occurring at any of our reference sites. Differences in seasonality of climates and different fuel structures are a possible explanation.