[PDF] The Last Interglaciation At Owens Lake California eBook

Author : Kirsten Margaret Menking
Publisher :
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 45,76 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Paleoclimatology
ISBN :

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In 1992, the U.S. Geological Survey cored Owens Lake to obtain a continuous paleoclimate record for the Sierra Nevada region. Owens Lake heads a chain of closed-basin lakes which are separated by a series of bedrock sills, received their water primarily from Sierra Nevadan precipitation, and overflowed during wet periods. The core records the histories of cyclic glaciation of the Sierra Nevada and water-balance of Owens Lake over the past 800 kyrs. A variety of paleoclimatic proxies have been studied, details of which may be found in Smith and Bischoff (1993). In this thesis, I report the results and interpretations of 1) grain-size and clay-mineralogical analyses performed on 3.5-m-long channel samples (%7500 years of sedimentation per sample) and point samples, 2) grain size, carbonate content, and oxygen isotopic measurements on 70-cm-long channel samples (%1500 years), and 3) a water-balance model used to infer the magnitude of runoff and evaporation changes necessary to fill the lakes in the Owens Lake system, and to determine the response time of the lake chain to climatic perturbations.

Author : A.R. Gillespie
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 595 pages
File Size : 32,92 MB
Release : 2003-12-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 0080474098

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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.