Middle- and late-Wisconsin paleobotanic and paleoclimatic records from the southern Colorado Plateau, USA

Late Wisconsin and Holocene Subalpine Forests of the Markagunt Plateau of Utah, Southwestern Colorado Plateau, U.S.A.

“…E1evationa1 ranges of individual plant species were depressed as much as 700 to 800 m in the Great Basin (Thompson, 1990;Rhode and Madsen, 1995), 720 to 800 m in the Grand Canyon (Phillips, 1977;Cole, 1990), 570 to 800 m along the Mogollon Rim of the southern Colorado Plateau (Jacobs, 1983;Anderson, 1993;Anderson et al, 1999), and at least 300 to 700 m lower in west-central Colorado (Fall, 1997). Lower elevation sites across the Colorado Plateau show similar elevational displacements (Betancourt, 1990;Anderson et al, 1999). The deglacial sequence of the high plateaus is poorly dated at present, but deglaciation in the Wasatch Mountains of northcentral Utah occurred by 12,300 ± 330 yr BP (Madsen and Currey, 1979) and by ca.…”

“…Third, additional high-elevation sites are necessary to complete the emerging picture of vegetation change deduced from the lowland elevations of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau, largely from packrat midden evidence (Betancourt, 1990;Thompson, 1990; To Panguitch Table 2. Anderson et al, 1999). Last, the paleovegetation record from Lowder Creek Bog is shown to be a sensitive indicator of environmental change.…”

Geochemistry and hydrology of perched groundwater springs: assessing elevated uranium concentrations at Pigeon Spring relative to nearby Pigeon Mine, Arizona (USA)

“…The biome for the majority of the study area is Great Basin Conifer (Arizona Game and Fish 2015) which is dominated by C3 plants and the Great Basin Desert Scrub biome is present in lower elevations on the western side of the study area. The plant communities have been similar for the last 14,040 years BP in the area to the north of the Grand Canyon, which includes the range of corrected groundwater ages (Anderson et al 2000). Appelo and Postma (2005) report −27‰ for δ 13 C of C3 plants and some arid zone C4 plants have a heavier δ 13 C value of −13‰ (Farquhar et al 1989;Vogel 1993).…”

Late Pleistocene and HoloceneBisonof the Colorado Plateau

“…The relative temperature (solid line) is represented as a proxy derived from d18-Oxygen isotopes from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2). Data from Marine Oxygen Isotope Stages (Anderson et al, 2000); and temperature from GISP2 (Grootes et al, 1993). Abbreviations: ka = kilo annum (thousand years ago); BP, Before Present; CE, Common Era; %, part per thousand.…”