Author: Eric Leland BilderbackPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cirques (Glacial landforms)
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
Timing and Paleoclimatic Significance of Latest Pleistocene and Holocene Cirque Glaciation in the Enchantment Lakes Basin, North Cascades, WA
Author: Eric Leland BilderbackPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cirques (Glacial landforms)
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
Master's Theses Directories
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
"Education, arts and social sciences, natural and technical sciences in the United States and Canada".
Glacial Chronology and Paleoclimatic Significance of Cirque Moraines Near Mts Baker and Shuksan, North Cascade Range, WA
Author: Robert Allen BurrowsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cirques (Glacial landforms)
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
The Quaternary Period in the United States
Author: A.R. GillespiePublisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080474098
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 595
Book Description
This book reviews advances in understanding of the past ca. two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.
Chronology of Late Holocene Glacier Recessions in the Cascade Range and Deposition of a Recent Esker in a Cirque Basin, North Cascade Range, Washington
Author: Jon L. RiedelExtent, Timing, and Climatic Significance of Latest Pleistocene and Holocene Glaciation in the Sierra Nevada, California
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Despite more than a century of study, scant attention has been paid to the glacial record in the northern end of the Sierra Nevada, and to the smaller moraines deposited after the retreat of the Tioga (last glacial maximum) glaciers. Equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) estimates of the ice fields indicate that the Tioga ELA gradients there are consistent with similar estimates for the southern half of the range, and with an intensification of the modern temperature/precipitation pattern in the region. The Recess Peak advance has traditionally been considered to be mid-Neoglacial age, about 2--3,000 yr B.P., on the basis of relative weathering estimates. Sediment cores of lakes dammed behind moraines correlative with Recess Peak in four widely spaced sites yields a series of high-resolution AMS radiocarbon dates which demonstrate that Recess Peak glaciers retreated before (approximately) 13,100 cal yr B.P. This minimum limiting age indicates that the advance predates the North Atlantic Younger Dryas cooling. It also implies that there have been no advances larger than the Matthes in the roughly 12,000 year interval between it and the Recess Peak advance. This finding casts doubt on several recent studies that claim Younger Dryas glacier advances in western North America. The 13,100 cal yr B.P. date is also a minimum age for deglaciation of the sample sites used to calibrate the in situ production rates of cosmogenic 1°Be and 26Al. The discrepancy between this age and the 11,000 cal yr B.P. exposure age assumed in the original calibration introduces a large (> 19%) potential error in late-Pleistocene exposure ages calculated using these production rates.
After the Ice Age
Author: E.C. PielouPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226668096
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
The fascinating story of how a harsh terrain that resembled modern Antarctica has been transformed gradually into the forests, grasslands, and wetlands we know today.
Late Pleistocene and Holocene Glacier and Climate Change
Author: Shaun Andrew MarcottPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
This dissertation presents results from three studies that address major scientific questions in glacial geology and paleoclimatology for the late Pleistocene and Holocene using relatively new geochemical and statistical techniques. Each of the studies attempts to answer a longstanding question in the respective field using geochemical or statistical methods that have not been applied to the problem thus far. A longstanding question in glaciology is the nature and mechanism of the so- called "Heinrich events" of the last ~60 ka. These massive iceberg discharge events into the North Atlantic from the partial breakup of the Laurentide Ice Sheet are identified from distinct ice rafted debris and detrital carbonate layers in marine sediment cores. The mechanism associated with the initiation of these events is commonly thought to be related to internal ice sheet instabilities. However, Heinrich events consistently occur following a long cooling trend that culminates in an extreme cold event, thus suggesting a possible triggering mechanism by climate. Recent modeling work has proposed an oceanic mechanism associated with ocean warming, but no physical evidence has been made available to date. To test this ocean-warming hypothesis, we measured temperature sensitive trace metals and stable isotopes in benthic foraminifera from a sediment core collected in the western North Atlantic that spans the last six Heinrich events and compared our results to climate model simulations using CCSM3. Our results show subsurface warming occurred prior to or coeval with nearly all of the Heinrich events of the last ~60 ka, thus implicating subsurface ocean warming as the main trigger of these rapid breakups of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. In the field of glacial geology a longstanding question has been the timing of alpine glacial advances during the Holocene. A number of studies have interpreted several Holocene glacial advances in western North America, but age control is based largely on relative dating techniques, which have been shown to be in error by up to 10,000 yrs in some cases. Based on 124 10Be surface exposure ages from twenty cirque moraines in ten mountain ranges across western North America, glacier were retreating from moraine positions during the latest Pleistocene or earliest Holocene and not throughout the Holocene epoch as previously assumed, thus requiring a refined interpretation of Holocene glacial activity in western North America and the associated climate forcing. In the field of paleoclimatology a question regarding how global temperature varied over the entirety of the Holocene epoch has remained to be answered for some time. While many temperature reconstructions exist for the last 2000 years, a full Holocene temperature stack does not exist, despite its potential utility of putting modern climate change into a full interglacial perspective. Based on a global composite of 73 proxy based temperature record, a Holocene temperature stack was constructed and used to demonstrate that a general cooling of ~1°C has occurred from the early to mid Holocene and that centennial and millennial scale variability is modest. We account for both temperature calibration and chronologic uncertainties using a Monte Carlo based approach. Our results are consistent with prior reconstructions of the last 2000 years and now allow for a full Holocene temperature perspective for evaluation with present and future climate change.
A Holocene Glaciolacustrine Record of the Lyman Glacier and Implications for Glacier Fluctuations in the North Cascades, Washington
Author: Harold N. WershowPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Geology, Stratigraphic
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Holocene glacial history of the North Cascades is poorly understood, in part because most existing records rely on moraine remnants and are therefore discontinuous. To develop a more complete record of Holocene fluctuations of North Cascades glaciers, we collected and analyzed glaciolacustrine sediments (i.e., rock flour) deposited over the past ~7800 years in Lyman Lake by the upstream Lyman Glacier. We combined these results with equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) reconstructions and glacier-climate modeling to quantify the climatic conditions that drove these fluctuations. Finally, we compared the Lyman Glacier's continuous fluctuation record to existing glacier and climate records of the North Cascades. Our results indicate that the Lyman Glacier was absent in the early Holocene, from before 7.8 ka until ~4.9 ka, when it experienced an early Neoglacial advance that persisted until at least ~3.8 ka. Following an extended non-glacial interval, the glacier experienced significant advances between ~2.6 - 2.25 ka, ~1.8 - 1.3 ka and ~1.1 - 0.9 ka. An advance starting ~ 0.8 ka (1150 CE) culminated at the glacier's maximum Holocene extent between ~0.6-0.5 ka (~1350 - 1450 CE), from which it retreated and disappeared entirely by ~0.35 ka (~1600 CE). After ~200 years with no significant glacier presence in the cirque, the glacier reformed and rapidly advanced to its maximum Holocene extent (~1800 - 1900 CE). Following this event, the glacier retreated steadily throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries and as of 2014, has approached its minimum viable extent. Paleo-ELA reconstructions of the glacier's maximum Holocene extents suggest that summers were ~2.6 °C cooler than modern (l981 - 2010 CE); alternatively, glacier-climate modeling indicates that annual temperatures ~1.5 °C cooler than modern would result in maximum glacier extents. Combining these new results with existing North Cascades glacial records indicates that: 1) the earliest Neoglacial advances in the region (starting ~6 ka) occurred asynchronously, with higher latitude and more maritime sites experiencing earlier advances; 2) Neoglacial advances remained small, infrequent and asynchronous until the last millennium; 3) Beginning at ~1.0 ka, glaciers throughout the North Cascades advanced synchronously, signaling the onset of the Little Ice Age (LIA); 4) North Cascades glaciers reached their maximum Holocene extents during the 15th and early 16th centuries (~0.55 - 0.45 ka), followed by apparent regional retreat and a final smaller 19th century (~0.15 - 0.05 ka) re-advance. The asynchronous early-to-mid Neoglacial fluctuations followed by synchronous LIA behavior suggests that local climate factors drove glacier fluctuations until the regional climate signal became strong enough to induce synchrony ca. 1.0 ka. Although the inferred regional retreat remains uncertain, the disappearance of the Lyman Glacier in the mid-LIA (~0.45 - 0.15 ka) is consistent with the precipitation record at Castor Lake (~100 km to the east), which indicates unusually dry winter conditions between ~1450 - 1850 CE (~0.5 - 0.1 ka).
Author: Jake Armour