Integrating stalagmite, vertebrate, and pollen sequences to investigate holocene vegetation and climate change in the Southern Midwestern United States

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.