Late Holocene dune activity in the Eastern Platte River Valley, Nebraska

Interpretations and common challenges of aeolian records from North American dune fields

“…While this was potentially the case during the latest Pleistocene, subsequent aeolian activity in these dune fields during the Holocene may have been the result of pulsed sediment supply, but more likely were the result of major climatic changes as has been suggested by several researchers (Forman et al, 2008;Hanson et al, 2009Hanson et al, , 2010Halfen et al, 2012). Much future research is needed to help validate these geomorphic connections during the latest Pleistocene.…”

“…Whereas the apparent linkages between dune fields in the Central Great Plains are evident through geomorphic (Ahlbrandt et al, 1983;Madole, 1995), chronologic (Miao et al, 2007;Hanson et al, 2009), and geochemical evidence (Muhs, 1997(Muhs, , 2004, the complexity of dune systems, due in part to the expansiveness of this region, must be emphasized. Thus, to assist in organizing discussions in the succeeding sections, the dune fields are organized into four sub-regional classifications, as 1) the Platte River drainage basin; 2) the Nebraska Sand Hills; 3) the Arkansas River drainage basin; and 4) the Canadian/Beaver/Cimarron (CBC) River drainage basin.…”

“…At the same time, these advances have added new challenges for comparing newer optical ages to ages derived using older protocols. For example, it is not uncommon to find early IRSL and TL ages with errors in excess of ±20% (Forman and Maat, 1990;Stokes and Gaylord, 1993;Forman et al, 1995), whereas more recent ages produced using SAR protocols (Hanson et al, 2009(Hanson et al, , 2010Werner et al, 2011;Halfen et al, 2012) have smaller errors, on the order of ±10%, which result in a millennium-magnitude increase in precision for ages dating to the late Pleistocene.…”

Synthesis on Quaternary aeolian research in the unglaciated eastern United States

“…Data also suggest that sediment supply was a major Fig. 1 (continued) factor in aeolian deposition and that in some areas aeolian activity continued well into the Holocene (e.g., Muhs and Holliday, 2001;Forman et al, 2005Forman et al, , 2008Forman et al, , 2009Hanson et al, 2009;Campbell et al, 2011;Halfen and Johnson, 2013).…”

Sandy desertification: Borne on the wind

“…After the studies of Thomas et al [84] and Wang et al [85], studies of sandy desertification, vegetation recovery, and dune activity at various spatial and temporal scales have been carried out around the world in different dune fields [64,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]. Because of severe wind erosion, other areas with high risks of sandy desertification include steppes and areas of reclaimed grasslands [94].…”