Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium
Long-term, large-scale perspectives are necessary for understanding climate variability and its effects on ecosystems and cultures. Tree ring records of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA) have documented major hydroclimatic variability during the last millennium in the Ameri...
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crplos:10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 2024-05-19T07:27:16+00:00 Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium Stager, J. Curt Wiltse, Brendan Cumming, Brian F. Messner, Timothy C. Robtoy, Joshua Cushing, Sidney Ummenhofer, Caroline National Science Foundation Draper-Lussi Endowment 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 en eng Public Library of Science (PLoS) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 3, page e0248060 ISSN 1932-6203 journal-article 2021 crplos https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 2024-05-01T07:07:18Z Long-term, large-scale perspectives are necessary for understanding climate variability and its effects on ecosystems and cultures. Tree ring records of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA) have documented major hydroclimatic variability during the last millennium in the American West, but fewer continuous, high-resolution hydroclimate records of the MCA-LIA period are available for eastern North America, particularly during the transition from the MCA to the LIA (ca. A.D. 1250–1400). Diatoms (micro-algae with silica cell walls) in sediment cores from three Adirondack (NY, USA) lakes and a hiatus in a wetland peat deposit in the Adirondack uplands provide novel insights into the late Holocene hydroclimate history of the Northeast. These records demonstrate that two of the region’s most extreme decadal-scale droughts of the last millennium occurred ca. A.D. 1260–1330 and ca. A.D. 1360–1390 during a dry-wet-dry (DWD) oscillation in the Adirondacks that contributed to forest fires and desiccation of wetlands in New York and Maine. The bimodal drying was probably related to more extreme droughts farther west and coincided with major events in Iroquoian and Abenaki cultural history. Although the causes of the DWD oscillation in the Adirondacks remain uncertain, changing sea-surface temperatures and solar variability are likely to have played a role. Article in Journal/Newspaper abenaki PLOS PLOS ONE 16 3 e0248060 |
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English |
description |
Long-term, large-scale perspectives are necessary for understanding climate variability and its effects on ecosystems and cultures. Tree ring records of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA) have documented major hydroclimatic variability during the last millennium in the American West, but fewer continuous, high-resolution hydroclimate records of the MCA-LIA period are available for eastern North America, particularly during the transition from the MCA to the LIA (ca. A.D. 1250–1400). Diatoms (micro-algae with silica cell walls) in sediment cores from three Adirondack (NY, USA) lakes and a hiatus in a wetland peat deposit in the Adirondack uplands provide novel insights into the late Holocene hydroclimate history of the Northeast. These records demonstrate that two of the region’s most extreme decadal-scale droughts of the last millennium occurred ca. A.D. 1260–1330 and ca. A.D. 1360–1390 during a dry-wet-dry (DWD) oscillation in the Adirondacks that contributed to forest fires and desiccation of wetlands in New York and Maine. The bimodal drying was probably related to more extreme droughts farther west and coincided with major events in Iroquoian and Abenaki cultural history. Although the causes of the DWD oscillation in the Adirondacks remain uncertain, changing sea-surface temperatures and solar variability are likely to have played a role. |
author2 |
Ummenhofer, Caroline National Science Foundation Draper-Lussi Endowment |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Stager, J. Curt Wiltse, Brendan Cumming, Brian F. Messner, Timothy C. Robtoy, Joshua Cushing, Sidney |
spellingShingle |
Stager, J. Curt Wiltse, Brendan Cumming, Brian F. Messner, Timothy C. Robtoy, Joshua Cushing, Sidney Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
author_facet |
Stager, J. Curt Wiltse, Brendan Cumming, Brian F. Messner, Timothy C. Robtoy, Joshua Cushing, Sidney |
author_sort |
Stager, J. Curt |
title |
Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
title_short |
Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
title_full |
Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
title_fullStr |
Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
title_full_unstemmed |
Hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern North America during the last millennium |
title_sort |
hydroclimatic and cultural instability in northeastern north america during the last millennium |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 |
genre |
abenaki |
genre_facet |
abenaki |
op_source |
PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 3, page e0248060 ISSN 1932-6203 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248060 |
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PLOS ONE |
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16 |
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3 |
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e0248060 |
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