Premium
Century scale paleoclimatic reconstruction from Moon Lake, a closed‐basin lake in the northern Great Plains
Author(s) -
Laird Kathleen R.,
Fritz Sherilyn C.,
Grimm Eric C.,
Mueller Pietra G.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
limnology and oceanography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 197
eISSN - 1939-5590
pISSN - 0024-3590
DOI - 10.4319/lo.1996.41.5.0890
Subject(s) - holocene , diatom , salinity , geology , period (music) , evapotranspiration , precipitation , paleoclimatology , physical geography , structural basin , climate change , oceanography , climatology , ecology , geography , paleontology , physics , meteorology , acoustics , biology
Estimates of past lake‐water salinity from fossil diatom assemblages were used to infer past climatic conditions at Moon Lake, a climatically sensitive site in the northern Great Plains. A good correspondence between diatom‐inferred salinity and historical records of mean annual precipitation minus evapotranspiration (P ‒ ET) strongly suggests that the sedimentary record from Moon Lake can be used to reconstruct past climatic conditions. Century‐scale analysis of the Holocene diatom record indicates four major hydrological periods: an early Holocene transition from an open freshwater system to a closed saline system by 7300 b.p ., which corresponds with a transition from spruce forest to deciduous parkland to prairie and indicates a major shift from wet to dry climate; a mid‐Holocene period of high salinity from 7300 to 4700 b.p ., indicating low effective moisture (P ‒ ET); a transitional period of high salinity from 4700 to 2200 b.p ., characterized by poor diatom preservation; and a late Holocene period of variable lower salinity during the past 2,200 yr, indicating fluctuations in effective moisture.