Late Quaternary Climates of Western Beringia

Patricia M. Anderson pander@uwashinton.edu  (Principal Investigator current)
Linda B. Brubaker  (Co-Principal Investigator current)
                    
Abstract    

     Abstract  ATM-9317569  Anderson, Patricia M.  Brubaker, Linda B. 
     University of Washington  Title: Late Quaternary Climate of Western Beringia   
     This award supports a project under paleoclimates in Arctic Lakes  and
     Estuaries (PALE), a program that focuses on the timing,  magnitude, and rates
     of change in arctic climates during the late  Quaternary.  Understanding the
     complex regional responses to past  shifts in global climate requires: 1) the
     compilation of numerous  well-dated records of paleoclimate indicators (e.g.,
     pollen); 2)  the calibration of these proxies by defining their modern climatic
      relationships; and 3) the comparison of climatic histories inferred  from the
     paleo-data to qualitative or quantitative paleoclimatic  models.  Although such
     data set are available from lakes in many  areas of the North American and
     European Arctic, comparable  information is virtually absent from northern
     Siberia.  This award supports a project designed to analyze pollen, spores,
     plant  macrofossils, and sediment geochemistry of lake cores to  reconstruct
     the late Quaternary vegetation and climate of Western  Beringia (northeast
     Siberia).  These histories will be  reconstructed for six study areas, which
     today encompass the range  of vegetation and climate in far northeast Russia. 
     Analyses of surficial lake muds will improve the definition of modern pollen-
     vegetation-climate relationships and aid the paleoclimatic  interpretation of
     fossil data.  The new Russian data will allow a  more detailed description of
     trans-Beringian paleovegetational  patterns and inferred paleoclimates.
     Definition of such broad-  scale patterns will help paleo-data/GCM comparisons
     for the Arctic,  thereby improving the understanding of high latitude responses
     to  global climatic changes.