Century scale paleoclimatic reconstruction from Moon Lake, a closed‐basin lake in the northern Great Plains

Laird, Kathleen R.; Fritz, Sherilyn C.; Grimm, Eric C.; Mueller, Pietra G.

doi:10.4319/lo.1996.41.5.0890

Cited by 193 publications

(157 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Distinguishing between the effects of temperature and aridity is difficult, but both factors were likely important during the MH. This inference is supported by quantitative climatic reconstructions in the region, including pollen evidence of warm and dry conditions (21) and diatom evidence of saline water associated with low effective moisture (45).…”

Section: Results and Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

Nelson

Tian

et al. 2003

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Paleorecords of the middle Holocene (MH) from the North American mid-continent can offer insights into ecological responses to pervasive drought that may accompany future climatic warming. We analyzed MH sediments from West Olaf Lake (WOL) and Steel Lake (SL) in Minnesota to examine the effects of warm͞dry climatic conditions on prairie-woodland ecosystems. Mineral composition and carbonate ␦ 18 O were used to determine climatic variations, whereas pollen assemblages, charcoal ␦ 13 C, and charcoal accumulation rates were used to reconstruct vegetation composition, C3 and C4 plant abundance, and fire. The ratio of aragonite͞calcite at WOL and ␦ 18 O at SL suggest that pronounced droughts occurred during the MH but that drought severity decreased with time. From charcoal ␦ 13 C data we estimated that the MH abundance of C4 plants averaged 50% at WOL and 43% at SL. At WOL C4 abundance was negatively correlated with aragonite͞calcite, suggesting that severe moisture deficits suppressed C4 plants in favor of weedy C3 plants (e.g., Ambrosia). As climate ameliorated C4 abundance increased (from Ϸ33 to 66%) at the expense of weedy species, enhancing fuel availability and fire occurrence. In contrast, farther east at SL where climate was cooler and wetter, C 4 abundance showed no correlation with ␦ 18 O-inferred aridity. Woody C 3 plants (e.g., Quercus) were more abundant, biomass flammability was lower, and fires were less important at SL than at WOL. Our results suggest that C 4 plants are adapted to warm͞dry climatic conditions, but not to extreme droughts, and that the fire regime is controlled by biomass-climate interactions. P ervasive drought, expected to be associated with climatic change in continental interiors, will have profound ecological, economic, and societal repercussions (1-4). Drought conditions are likely to alter ecosystem function by changing the relative abundance of plant functional groups (e.g., C 3 vs. C 4 ) in natural systems (5-7). For example, episodic droughts that occurred throughout the 20th century in the midwestern United States killed woody C 3 genera, such as Quercus (8-10), and favored better adapted C 3 and C 4 herbaceous species (9). General circulation models coupled with dynamic crop-growth models project that, in agricultural systems, such climatic conditions could significantly reduce both C 3 (e.g., wheat, Triticum aestivum L.) and C 4 (e.g., corn, Zea mays L.) cereal crop yields (11,12), resulting in billions of dollars of economic loss (13,14). Empirical evidence of the response of plant functional groups to climatic conditions characteristic of drought is therefore important for evaluating predictions of future change. However, such evidence is mostly limited to historical records (15, 16), which lack the full range of past drought variability (3), and to short-term experimental manipulations (17, 18), which lack a sufficient temporal dimension for understanding future vegetational response.During the middle Holocene (MH), Ϸ8.0-4.0 thousand years (ka) B.P. (19), the midweste...

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Section: Results and Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

Nelson

Tian

et al. 2003

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…In addition, there is more limited evidence for a major climatic shift at roughly 2100 cal BP (Laird et al, 1996;Anderson et al, 2005;Denniston et al, 2007;Miao et al, 2007), which also may reflect a large-scale change in the continental circulation.…”

Section: Comparison To Regional Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A diatom record of late Holocene climate variation in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, USA

Bracht

Stone

Fritz

2008

Quaternary International

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“…In general, closed lakes (endorheic lakes), especially, small ones, are more sensitive to changing climate or human interventions than open lakes (exorheic lakes). Under some extremely climatic conditions, small lakes may disappear entirely [4,8]. Studies reported that rising temperature and variations in precipitation have caused dramatic changes in the lakes on the Qinghai-Tibetan and Mongolian plateaus and resulted in many ecological hazards since the 1970s [9][10][11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic of Dalinor Lakes in the Inner Mongolian Plateau and Its Driving Factors during 1976–2015

Gao

et al. 2017

Water

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Climate change and increasing human activities have induced lake expansion or shrinkage, posing a serious threat to the ecological security on the Inner Mongolian Plateau, China. However, the pattern of lake changes and how it responds to climate change and revegetation have rarely been reported. We investigated the pattern of lake-area changes in the Dalinor National Nature Reserve (DNR) using Landsat imagery during 1976-2015, and examined its relationship with changes in climate and vegetation factors. The total lake-area in the DNR has decreased by 11.6% from 1976 to 2015 with a rate of −0.55 km 2 year −1 . The largest Dalinor Lake reduced the most (by 32.7 km 2 ) with a rate of −0.79 km 2 year −1 . The air temperature has increased significantly since 1976, with a rate of 0.03 • C year −1 (p < 0.05), while the precipitation slightly decreased during 1976-2015, with a rate of −0.86 mm year −1 . The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) increased by 27.7% from 1976 to 2015, especially after 2001 when vegetation has been promoted greatly as a result of the successful ecological protection and restoration in the Dalinor basin. The decrease in lake-areas for the DNR exhibited a negative correlation with NDVI (r = −0.397, p < 0.05) during 1976-2015. It seems that decreasing precipitation drives the reduction in lake-area, while rising temperature and vegetation greenness accelerated this decreasing trend by increasing evapotranspiration. The continuous lake shrinkage increases the ecological risks to the habitat of birds, causing a challenge to the management in the DNR.

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Century scale paleoclimatic reconstruction from Moon Lake, a closed‐basin lake in the northern Great Plains

Cited by 193 publications

References 51 publications

Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

A diatom record of late Holocene climate variation in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, USA

Dynamic of Dalinor Lakes in the Inner Mongolian Plateau and Its Driving Factors during 1976–2015

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Century scale paleoclimatic reconstruction from Moon Lake, a closed‐basin lake in the northern Great Plains

Cited by 193 publications

References 51 publications

Response of C 3 and C 4 plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

Response of C 3 and C 4 plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

A diatom record of late Holocene climate variation in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, USA

Dynamic of Dalinor Lakes in the Inner Mongolian Plateau and Its Driving Factors during 1976–2015

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Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota

Response of C ₃ and C ₄ plants to middle-Holocene climatic variation near the prairie–forest ecotone of Minnesota