T291 The Legacy of Herbert E. Wright, Jr.: Seminal Contributions toward Understanding Interactions among Quaternary Climate, Landscape Processes, Vegetation, and Human Society

Wednesday, 28 September 2016
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 407

NON-MARINE OSTRACODES AND THE MULTI-PROXY APPROACH-- REGIONAL AND HEMISPHERIC CHANGES IN QUATERNARY HYDROCLIMATOLOGY

Paper number: T291-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:10 AM – 10:25 AM

Authors

Abstract

The multi-proxy approach to paleoecological analysis was championed by Herb Wright, a powerful advocate for developing large databases for Quaternary Studies. Mutual Climatic Range (MCR) methods for ostracodes reconstruct past air temperatures, facilitating comparison with other proxies, but have hitherto relied on databases such as NODE in Europe and NANODe in the USA which, on their own, fail to capture fully many species’ distribution. As non-marine ostracode databases for large regions of the Northern Hemisphere become widely available (see www.neotomadb.org and www.biofresh.org) they are being united via the Ostracod Metadatabase of Environmental and Geographical Attributes (OMEGA). Harmonization of these datasets continues, but preliminary mapping of species’ distributions in Holarctic view reveals changing conditions of surface hydrology with climate forcing through the Quaternary.

Cytherissa lacustris identifies permanent, cold, freshwater habitats in Plio-Pleistocene and Holocene time slices in North America and Europe, showing its southernmost extent during the MIS2 glacial and retreating northwards during the Late Glacial and early Holocene. Cytherissa lacustris and Candona caudata have co-occurred since the Pliocene and today are found in permanent, freshwater lakes in North America and Europe (Clementsian distribution). Limnocythere ceriotuberosa and L. bradburyi co-occurred in the North American Pleistocene but dispersed into different climatic zones in the Holocene (Gleasonian distribution).

Such distributions facilitate valuable hydrologic and temperature reconstructions for archaeological interpretation, e.g. at the British MIS11 human occupation site at West Stow where new calibration of L. suessenbornensis, taxonomically harmonized with North American L. friabilis, suggests a previously unrecognized cold start for the interglacial. A multi-proxy approach applies the mutual climatic range method to determining the narrowest possible temperature range within which all available proxy assemblages could have coexisted. Preliminary results for the MIS9 interglacial in Britain, incorporating ostracode, beetle, pollen and plant macrofossils, fish and herpetiles, indicate a more continental climate than today, with a modern analogue in northern Germany.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 7

doi: 10.1130/abs/2016AM-282717

© Copyright 2016 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.