Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:58:58.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Late Quaternary Vegetational Changes on the East Side of Yellowstone Park, Wyoming1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jean C.B. Waddington  and
H.E. Wright Jr.
Jean C.B. Waddington
Affiliation:
Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 USA.
H.E. Wright Jr.
Affiliation:
Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A bog pond 4 km east of Yellowstone Lake has a pollen record starting with an Artemisia spruce assemblage, implying alpine vegetation. A layer of volcanic ash, dated as 14,360 ± 400 BP (probably Glacier Peak or Mt. St. Helens J), occurs within the zone, which terminates at 11,630 ± 180 BP. The rest of the pollen sequence is dominated by lodgepole pine, with reappearance of spruce pollen in modest quantities about 4500 BP, according to dating provided by a layer of Mt. Mazama ash (6600 BP). The present vegetation of the area is marked by forests of lodgepole pine with some stands of spruce and fir. The pollen sequence suggests that the upper treeline before 11,600 y. a. was perhaps 500 m lower than today. The climate then became warmer and/or drier than today (Altithermal interval). About 4500 y. a., a slight climatic reversal took place, roughly contemporaneous with the regrowth of glaciers in the western mountains (neoglaciation).

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 175 - 184
Copyright
University of Washington

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Contribution No. 97, Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota.

References

Baker, R.G., (1969). Late Quaternary pollen and plant macrofossils from abandoned-lagoon sediments near Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming. University of Colorado, Ph.D. Thesis .Google Scholar
Baker, R.G., (1970). Pollen sequence from late Quaternary sediments in Yellowstone Park. Science 168, 1449–1450.Google Scholar
Bradbury, J.P., Waddington, Jean C.B., (1973). The impact of European settlement on Shagawa Lake, northeastern Minnesota USA. Birks, H.J.B., West, R.G., Quaternary Plant Ecology Blackwells, Oxford.Google Scholar
Bent, Anne M., Wright, H.E. Jr., (1963). Pollen analyses of surface materials and lake sediments for the Chuska Mountains, New Mexico. Geological Society of America, Bulletin 74, 491–500.Google Scholar
Bright, R.C., (1966). Pollen and seed stratigraphy of Swan Lake, southeastern Idaho: its relation to regional vegetational history and to Lake Bonneville history. Tebiwa, Journal of the Idaho State University Museum 9, 2 1–47.Google Scholar
Craig, A.J., (1972). Pollen influx to laminated sediments: a pollen diagram from northeastern Minnesota. Ecology 53, 46–57.Google Scholar
Davis, M.B., (1967). Pollen accumulation rates at Rogers Lake, Connecticut, during late- and postglacial time. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 2, 219–230.Google Scholar
Fryxell, R., (1965). Mazama and Glacier Peak volcanic ash layers: relative ages. Science 147, 1288–1290.Google Scholar
Maher, L.J. Jr., (1972). Absolute pollen diagram of Redrock Lake, Boulder County, Colorado. Quaternary Research 2, 531–553.Google Scholar
Maher, L.J. Jr., (1963). Pollen analyses of surface materials from the southern San Juan Mountains, Colorado. Geological Society of America, Bulletin 74, 1485–1504.Google Scholar
Mudge, M.R., (1967). Surficial geologic map of the Sawtooth Ridge quadrangle, Teton and Lewis and Clark Counties, Montana. U.S. Geological Survey, Map GQ-610 .Google Scholar
Mullineaux, D.R., Hyde, J.H., Rubin, M., (1972). Preliminary assessment of upper Pleistocene and Holocene pumiceous tephra from Mount St. Helens, southern Washington. Geological Society of America 4, 204–205(Abstracts with Programs).Google Scholar
Porter, S.C., Denton, G.H., (1967). Chronology of neoglaciation in the North American Cordillera. American Journal of Science 265, 177–210.Google Scholar
Richmond, G.M., (1965). Glaciation of the Rocky Mountains. Wright, H.E. Jr., Frey, D.G., The Quaternary of the United States Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ 217–230.Google Scholar
Swain, Albert M., (1973). A history of fire and vegetation in northeastern Minnesota as recorded in lake sediments. Quaternary Research 3, 383–396.Google Scholar
Waddington, Jean C.B., (1969). The stratigraphic record of the pollen influx to a lake in the Big Woods of Minnesota. Geological Society of America, Special Paper 123, 264–282.Google Scholar
Wedel, W.R., Husted, W.M., Moss, J.H., (1968). Mummy Cave: prehistoric record from Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. Science 160, 184–186.Google Scholar
Wilcox, R.E., (1965). Volcanic-ash chronology. Wright, H.E. Jr., Frey, D.G., The Quaternary of the United States 807–816.Google Scholar