ESH: Late Quaternary Paleoenvironmental Record of Small Playa-Basins on the Southern High Plains

[8073447] holliday8 .本研究是对保存在德克萨斯州西北部南部高平原和新墨西哥州东部的小型盐湖盆地的晚第四纪古环境记录进行调查。该项目的目的是为了更好地理解：1)晚更新世冷干环境向冷湿环境的演变；2)更新世最后千年至全新世早期的干冷环境快速反复转换；3)导致全新世早期和中期气候相对干燥和温暖的环境变化的速率和时间；4)在全新世的过去几千年里，环境迅速而反复地转向干旱。对盐湖填充物的初步研究表明，它们具有可追溯的、连续的沉积记录，跨越晚第四纪，并以沉积物本身的形式包含了古环境指标，以及稳定的碳同位素和植物岩。这项工作是在野外完成的。这项研究将为大平原景观的一个重要组成部分的年龄和起源提供线索。更具体地说，这些研究将有助于了解对环境变化敏感的南部高平原地区的晚第四纪环境演化，环境波动的区域意义，以及高平原景观对这些变化的响应。因此，本研究将补充，更重要的是，加强和显著扩展晚第四纪景观演化和环境变化响应的古环境记录

9807347HollidayThe proposed research is an investigation of the late Quaternary paleoenvironmental record preserved in the small playa basins on the Southern High Plains of northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico. The goals of this project are to better understand: 1) cool-dry environments evolving into cool-moist ones in the late Pleistocene; 2) rapid and repeated shifts between cool-moist and warm-dry environments in the last millennia of the Pleistocene and early millennia of the Holocene; 3) the rate and timing of the environmental changes that resulted in the relatively dry and warm climate that characterized much of the early and middle Holocene; and 4) rapid and repeated environmental departures toward aridity in the past few millennia of the Holocene. Preliminary investigations of playa fills indicate that they have dateable, continuous records of sedimentation spanning the late Quaternary, and that they contain paleoenvironmental indicators in the form of the sediments themselves, and also stable-carbon isotopes and phytoliths. The work collected in the field. The research will provide clues to the age and origin of a significant component of the Great Plains landscape. More specifically, the studies will help in understanding the late Quaternary evolution of the environment of the Southern High Plains, a region known to be sensitive to environmental changes, the regional significance of environmental fluctuations, and the response of the High Plains landscape to these shifts. The proposed research, therefore, will complement and, more importantly, strengthen and significantly expand the late-Quaternary paleoenvironmental record of landscape evolution and response to environmental change