Abrupt climate change as an important agent of ecological change in the Northeast U.S. throughout the past 15,000 years
Citable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3004As published
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.04.005Abstract
We use a series of tests to evaluate two competing hypotheses about the association of climate
and vegetation trends in the northeastern United States over the past 15 kyrs. First, that abrupt
climate changes on the scale of centuries had little influence on long-term vegetation trends,
and second, that abrupt climate changes interacted with slower climate trends to determine the
regional sequence of vegetation phases. Our results support the second. Large dissimilarity
between temporally-close fossil pollen samples indicates large vegetation changes within 500
years across >4° of latitude at ca. 13.25-12.75, 12.0-11.5, 10.5, 8.25, and 5.25 ka. The evidence of
vegetation change coincides with independent isotopic and sedimentary indicators of rapid
shifts in temperature and moisture balance. In several cases, abrupt changes reversed long-term
vegetation trends, such as when spruce (Picea) and pine (Pinus) pollen percentages rapidly
declined to the north and increased to the south at ca. 13.25-12.75 and 8.25 ka respectively.
Abrupt events accelerated other long‐term trends, such as a regional increase in beech (Fagus)
pollen percentages at 8.5-8.0 ka. The regional hemlock (Tsuga) decline at ca. 5.25 ka is unique
among the abrupt events, and may have been induced by high climatic variability (i.e., repeated
severe droughts from 5.7-2.0 ka); autoregressive ecological and evolutionary processes could
have maintained low hemlock abundance until ca. 2.0 ka. Delayed increases in chestnut
(Castanea) pollen abundance after 5.8 and 2.5 ka also illustrate the potential for multi-century
climate variability to influence species’ recruitment as well as mortality. Future climate changes
will probably also rapidly initiate persistent vegetation change, particularly by acting as broad,
regional-scale disturbances.
Description
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Quaternary Science Reviews 28 (2009): 1693-1709, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.04.005.
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Suggested Citation
Preprint: Shuman, Bryan N., Newby, Paige E., Donnelly, Jeffrey P., "Abrupt climate change as an important agent of ecological change in the Northeast U.S. throughout the past 15,000 years", 2009-03-30, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.04.005, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3004Related items
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