A High-Resolution Case History: The Loch Lomond Ice Sheet in the Scottish Highlands

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This research is designed to document a high-precision record of terrestrial responses to the widespread and rapid ocean/atmosphere reorganization in and around the North Atlantic Ocean during the Younger Dryas Chronozone of the last deglaciation (11,000-10,000 years ago). The chronology and rates of change in vegetation and association climate during the Younger Dryas will be documented for land areas adjacent to the late-glacial Loch Lomond ice sheet over the Scottish Highlands. An AMS 14C chronology of changing paleo-vegetation will be used to document the timing of terrestrial biotic responses as a kind of bioassay for the rapid reorganization of the North Atlantic. In turn, lags in growth and dissipation of the ice sheet will be determined and cross- calibrated with the climate record from Scotland, Ireland and the North Atlantic. Results of this work will define the boundary conditions needed to develop and test several numerical models of growth and response of ice-sheet to major, abrupt, and transient climate shifts of the past and future. One such model of ice-sheet dynamics will be developed and tested as part of the project.