Pollen, vegetation, and climate relationships along the Dalton Highway, Alaska, USA: a basis for holocene paleoecological and paleoclimatic studies
The Dalton Highway extends from Fairbanks, in the interior of Alaska, to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Coastal Plain. Over this 600-km transect, July temperatures vary from 17 to 5/sup 0/C. Studies of vegetation along the Dalton Highway identified nine major zones. During the vegetation survey moss polsters were collected within the survey quadrats. Two hundred and nineteen individual moss polsters document regional variations in the modern pollen spectra along this vegetation/climate transect. Treeline is distinguished by a change from dominance by spruce and shrub (especially alder) pollen to the south to herb and shrub (especially willow) pollen dominance to the north; a shift from high modern pollen concentration values to very low values is also noted. Discriminant analysis indicated that the vegetation zones are also defined by different pollen assemblages, suggesting that former changes in vegetation during the Holocene, as recorded in peat deposits, could be interpreted from pollen diagrams. Transfer functions were developed to examine the statistical association between the modern pollen rain and several climatic parameters. The correlation between pollen taxa and mean July temperature was r = 0.84. The most important taxa in the equation are Picea, Alnus, Pinus, Sphagnum, and Betula. 59 references, 7 figures, 4 tables.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
- OSTI ID:
- 6899617
- Journal Information:
- Arctic Alpine Res. (Boulder, Colo.); (United States), Vol. 18:1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Late Glacial and Early Holocene Climatic Changes Based on a Multiproxy Lacustrine Sediment Record from Northeast Siberia
VEGETATION MEDIATED THE IMPACTS OF POSTGLACIAL CLIMATIC CHANGE ON FIRE REGIMES IN THE SOUTHCENTRAL BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA
Related Subjects
ALASKA
PALEOCLIMATOLOGY
CLIMATES
BIOLOGICAL INDICATORS
ENVIRONMENT
VARIATIONS
AMBIENT TEMPERATURE
BIRCHES
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
HERBS
MOSSES
POLLEN
SHRUBS
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
SPRUCES
DATA
DISTRIBUTION
FEDERAL REGION X
GAMETES
GERM CELLS
INFORMATION
NORTH AMERICA
NUMERICAL DATA
PALEONTOLOGY
PLANTS
TREES
USA
510100* - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (-1989)