Moisture and temperature changes associated with the mid-Holocene Tsuga decline in the northeastern United States

Marsicek, Jeremiah; Shuman, Bryan N.; Brewer, Simon; Foster, David R.; Oswald, W. Wyatt

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.09.001

Cited by 64 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…In the northeast U.S., where the greatest density of quantitative records exists, the lake-level and pollen records indicate an increase in annual effective precipitation of 25-50 mm, about 2-5% of mean annual precipitation in the region today, since the early part of the first millennium CE (Gajewski, 1988;Marsicek et al, 2013;Newby et al, 2014). Trends range from having magnitudes similar to those in northeast to no significant trends in pollen-inferred precipitation 25 reconstructions from the Great Lakes region (Gajewski, 1988;St.…”

Section: Magnitudes Of Changementioning

confidence: 96%

“…For example, in Massachusetts in the northeast U.S., multiple pollen and lake-level datasets indicate that effective annual precipitation increased by <50 mm over 2000 years or <0.025 mm/yr ( Fig. 7B) (Marsicek et al, 2013). By comparison, annual precipitation in that area has increased by 2.7 mm/yr since 1948 CE Clim.…”

Section: Prominent Low-frequency Patternsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…6), but, at 25 the scale of individual millennia or centuries such as those of the last 2000 years, the signal-to-noise ratio in many records may be relatively low. For example, independent lake-level and pollen-derived estimates of Common Era changes can correlate closely (Marlon et al, 2016;Marsicek et al, 2013), but the root mean squared error of pollen-inferred annual precipitation equals ~165 mm compared to trends of <50 mm over 2000 years (Fig. 7).…”

Section: Prominent Low-frequency Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1). In some cases, the sedimentological data have been converted to quantitative estimates of lake level (e.g., 10 Pribyl and Shuman, 2014), which, in a subset of these records, have been used to calculate changes in precipitation minus evaporation (e.g., Marsicek et al, 2013). In others, the data provide a relative index of lake status.…”

Section: Lake Datasets: Biotic Geochemical Sedimentologicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…15 2E), the pollen assemblages that provide much of the evidence for the inferred drying since the MCA are influenced by land use since ca. 1600 CE and should be interpreted cautiously (Fuller et al, 1998;Marsicek et al, 2013;St. Jacques et al, 2015;Webb et al, 1993).…”

Section: Medieval Drying and Low-frequency Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Millennial-to-centennial patterns and trends in the hydroclimate of North America over the past 2000 years

Shuman

Routson

McKay

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Abstract.A synthesis of 93 hydrologic records from across North and Central America, and adjacent tropical and Arctic islands, reveals centennial to millennial trends in the regional hydroclimates of the Common Era (CE; past 2000 years). The hydrological records derive from materials stored in lakes, bogs, caves, and ice from extant glaciers, which have the continuity through time to preserve low-frequency (>100 year) climate signals that may not be well represented by other 20 shorter-lived archives, such as tree-ring chronologies. The most common pattern, represented in 46 (49%) of the records, indicates that the centuries before 1000 CE were drier than the centuries since that time. Principal components analysis indicates that millennial-scale trends represent the dominant pattern of variance in the southwest and northeast U.S., the midcontinent, Pacific Northwest, the Arctic, and the tropics, although not all records within a region show the same direction of change. The Pacific Northwest, Greenland, and the southernmost tier of the tropical sites tended to dry toward present, as 25 many other areas became wetter than before. Twenty-two records (24%) indicate that the Medieval period (800-1300 CE) was drier than the Little Ice Age (1400-1900 CE), but in many cases the difference was part of the longer millennial-scale trend, and, in 25 records (27%), the Medieval period represented a pluvial (wet) phase. Where quantitative records permitted a comparison, we found that centennial-scale fluctuations over the Common Era represented changes of 3-7% of the modern inter-annual range of variability in precipitation, but the accumulation of these long-term trends over the entirety of the 30Holocene caused recent centuries to be significantly wetter, on average, than most of the past 11,000 years.

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Section: Magnitudes Of Changementioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Prominent Low-frequency Patternsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Prominent Low-frequency Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lake Datasets: Biotic Geochemical Sedimentologicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Medieval Drying and Low-frequency Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Millennial-to-centennial patterns and trends in the hydroclimate of North America over the past 2000 years

Shuman

Routson

McKay

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Centennial‐to‐millennial hydrologic trends and variability along the North Atlantic Coast, USA, during the Holocene

Newby

Shuman

Donnelly

et al. 2014

Geophysical Research Letters

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Geophysical and sedimentary records from five lakes in Massachusetts reveal regionally coherent hydrologic variability during the Holocene. All of the lakes have risen since~9.0 ka, but multicentury droughts after 5.6 ka repeatedly lowered their water levels. Quantified water level histories from the three best-studied lakes share >70% of their reconstructed variance. Four prominent low-water phases at 4.9-4.6, 4.2-3.9, 2.9-2.1, and 1.3-1.2 ka were synchronous across coastal lakes, even after accounting for age uncertainties. The droughts also affected sites up to~200 km inland, but water level changes at 5.6-4.9 ka appear out of phase between inland and coastal lakes. During the enhanced multicentury variability after~5.6 ka, droughts coincided with cooling in Greenland and may indicate circulation changes across the North Atlantic region. Overall, the records demonstrate that current water levels are exceptionally high and confirm the sensitivity of water resources in the northeast U.S. to climate change.

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Contrasting human versus climatic impacts on erosion

Cook

Yellen

Woodruff

et al. 2015

Geophysical Research Letters

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Both human activity and climate change can influence erosion rates and initiate rapid landscape change. Understanding the relative impact of these factors is critical to managing the risks of extreme erosion related to flooding and landslide occurrence. Here we present a 2100 year record of sediment mass accumulation and inferred erosion based on lacustrine sediment cores from Amherst Lake, Vermont, USA. Using deposition from August 2011 Tropical Storm Irene as a modern analogue, we identified distinct event deposits indicative of destructive erosion events. These deposits record a prolonged (multidecadal) interval of enhanced erosion following the initial storm‐induced landscape disturbance. The direct impact of human land cover alteration is minimal in comparison to the more recent twentieth century increase in the occurrence of catastrophic erosion linked to overall wetter conditions that favor high erosion rates and more easily trigger landslides during periods of extreme precipitation.

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Moisture and temperature changes associated with the mid-Holocene Tsuga decline in the northeastern United States

Cited by 64 publications

References 58 publications

Millennial-to-centennial patterns and trends in the hydroclimate of North America over the past 2000 years

Millennial-to-centennial patterns and trends in the hydroclimate of North America over the past 2000 years

Centennial‐to‐millennial hydrologic trends and variability along the North Atlantic Coast, USA, during the Holocene

Contrasting human versus climatic impacts on erosion

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