Climatic and Vegetational Oscillations During the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition in Alaska

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9619583 Hu Evidence is compelling from the circum-North Atlantic and from other parts of the globe that climatic warming during the last glacial-interglacial transition (LGIT) was punctuated by short-lived reversals to near-glacial conditions. In Alaska paleoecological and stable-isotope data from scattered sites strongly suggest the existence of short-lived climatic events during the LGIT. This PALE/ARCSS award supports a project to acquire high-temporal resolution records of vegetation and climate during the LGIT by analyzing a suite of proxy indicators in sediment cores from lakes across three sub-regions of Alaska. Vegetational reconstructions will be based on pollen, spore, and plant-macrofossil records supplemented by carbon-content and magnetic-susceptibility stratigraphies. The complementary properties of these proxies will allow the identification of the most plausible paleoenvironmental scenarios. The results from this project will be used to assess the timing, geographic extent, character, and magnitude of climatic and vegetational oscillations during the LGIT in Alaska. As part of the longitudinal (circumarctic) database from PALE and the latitudinal database form PEP-I, paleorecords from this project should offer insights into the linkages of North Pacific high-latitudes to the global climate system and the mechanisms causing abrupt climatic changes.