Integrating stalagmite, vertebrate, and pollen sequences to investigate holocene vegetation and climate change in the Southern Midwestern United States
Rf. Denniston et al., Integrating stalagmite, vertebrate, and pollen sequences to investigate holocene vegetation and climate change in the Southern Midwestern United States, QUATERN RES, 52(3), 1999, pp. 381-387
Speleothem carbon and oxygen isotopic records from Onondaga Cave, south-cen
tral Missouri, and Beckham Creek Cave, northcentral Arkansas, are compared
with the Cupola Pond and Oldfield Swamp pollen series from southeastern Mis
souri and the Rodgers Shelter and Modoc Shelter vertebrate biostratigraphic
sequences from central Missouri and southwestern Illinois. Similar, and ro
ughly contemporaneous, shifts between deciduous forest and steppe indicator
s throughout the Holocene are revealed in each database. These independent
proxies record steppe conditions between approximately 9000 and 1500 cal yr
B.P. A shift toward lighter speleothem carbon may reflect a change from wa
rm and dry to cool and dry conditions between 4500 and 3000 yr B.P. The sen
sitive response of speleothem delta(13)C to changes in vegetation emphasize
s their importance as paleoclimate records in an area containing few other
millenial-scale climate proxies. (C) 1999 University of Washington.