Late Quaternary Climate Change in the Eastern Interior of Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Pilot Study

Bruce P. Finney    finney@ims.alaska.edu (Principal Investigator current)
Mary E. Edwards (Co-Principal Investigator current)
                
Abstract    

     This award supports a multidisciplinary study of three lakes in
     eastern interior Alaska to investigate how lake-levels, vegetation, and
     sedimentary processes are related to climate change.  The study will focus on
     the late Wisconsin and early Holocene (c.a. 14,000 to 6000 years B.P.), a
     period of marked and relatively rapid climatic change.  The lakes are expected
     to be sensitive to climatic fluctuations and have sedimentation rates rapid
     enough to record high-frequency events.  This work has three components:  1.
     assessment of the detail with which a lake-level record can be constructed; 2.
     comparison of high resolution records of vegetation change from fossil pollen
     with the lake-level record to examine how lakes and vegetation differ in their
     response to climate change; 3. the construction of basic hydrologic budgets for
     each lake and their use to estimate past values of important parameters of the
     hydrologic system, in particular precipitation. This project represents an
     element of the PALE project (Paleoclimates of Arctic Lakes and Estuaries).