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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2015

  • Title: Post-glacial climate, vegetation, and fire across southern New England
  • Primary Author: Wyatt Oswald (Emerson College)
  • Additional Authors: Elaine Doughty (Harvard Forest); David Foster (Harvard University); Barbara Hansen (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities); Bryan Shuman (University of Wyoming)
  • Abstract:

    Ongoing work on lake-sediment records from southern New England continues to yield new insights into the post-glacial environmental and ecological history of this long-studied region. Paleoclimate research, including analyses of compound-specific isotopic geochemistry (e.g., Hou et al. 2012, Holocene 22: 525-529) and reconstructions of lake-level variations (e.g., Marsicek et al. 2013, Quaternary Science Reviews 80: 129-142), reveals a progressive increase in effective moisture over the Holocene, as well as the occurrence of high-frequency drought events superimposed on the long-term trend. Pollen data from a growing number of sites reflect the sensitivity of vegetation to changes in temperature and precipitation, including abrupt declines in hemlock and oak during the middle Holocene in inland and coastal areas of southern New England (Foster et al., 2006, Ecology 87: 2959-2966). Detailed analyses of the hemlock and oak declines, however, suggest that these changes in forest composition varied in terms of their magnitude and timing, apparently in response to sub-regional variability in climate and soils, resulting in heterogeneous vegetation patterns through time and across space. Analyses of lake-sediment charcoal records indicate that fire also varied at the landscape scale during the Holocene. Taken together, these studies of climate, vegetation, and fire in southern New England over the last 15,000 years improve our understanding of the drivers, patterns, and rates of environmental and ecological change at spatial and temporal scales relevant to contemporary global-change research.

  • Research Category: Historical and Retrospective Studies