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Science 7 December 1984:
Vol. 226. no. 4679, pp. 1191 - 1194
DOI: 10.1126/science.226.4679.1191
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Articles

The Variability of Holocene Climate Change: Evidence from Varved Lake Sediments

WALTER E. DEAN 1, J. PLATT BRADBURY 1, ROGER Y. ANDERSON 2, and CATHY W. BARNOSKY 3

1 U.S. Geological Survey, Federal Center, Denver, Colorado 80225
2 Department of Geology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque 87131
3 Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Varved sediments from a lake near the present forest-prairie border in northwestern Minnesota provide an annual record of climate change for the last 10,400 years. Climate-sensitive mineral, chemical, and biological components show that the mid-Holocene dry interval between 8500 and 4000 years ago is asymmetrical and actually consists of two distinct drier pulses separated by a moister interval that lasted about 600 years. Cyclic fluctuations with periods of several hundred years were abrupt and persistent throughout the Holocene and are most clearly recorded within the two drier pulses.

Submitted on June 7, 1984
Accepted on September 17, 1984


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Hydrologic response of the Crow Wing Watershed, Minnesota, to mid-Holocene climate change.
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Regional aridity in North America during the middle Holocene.
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Holocene environmental change in the Zacapu Basin, Mexico: a diatom-based record.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)