Neopluvial

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The Neopluvial was a phase of wetter and colder climate that occurred during the late Holocene in the Western United States. During the Neopluvial, water levels in a number of now-dry lakes and closed lakes such as the Great Salt Lake rose and vegetation changed in response to increased precipitation. The event was not exactly synchronous everywhere, with neopluvial lake-level rises occurring between 6,000 and 2,000 years ago. It is correlative to the Neoglacial period.

Contents

Evidence

The neopluvial took place in the western United States during the late Holocene, [1] causing the levels of lakes in the Great Basin to increase [2] and previously dry lakes and springs to refill. [3] It has been observed in Great Salt Lake, [4] Fallen Leaf Lake, [5] Lake Cochise, [6] the Mojave Desert, [7] Mono Lake, Owens Lake, Pyramid Lake, [5] San Luis Lake, [6] Silver Lake, [7] Summer Lake, [8] Tulare Lake, [9] Walker Lake [5] and Winnemucca Lake. [10]

During the Neopluvial, the Great Salt Lake became fresher, [4] and Pyramid Lake reached a water level of 1,186 metres (3,891 ft) above sea level. [5] Walker Lake, Owens Lake and Mono Lake experienced their highest Holocene water levels, [5] with the volumes of the latter two lakes more than doubling. [11] Likewise, water levels in Lake Tahoe rose to the point of overflowing into the Truckee River. [12] Silver Lake in the Mojave Desert formed a perennial lake and vegetation was more widespread in the Little Granite Mountains. [7] Summer Lake rose above its present-day level to an elevation of c.1,278 metres (4,193 ft), [13] although it was not as high as during the mid-Holocene. [8] Water levels rose in Tulare Lake as well. [9]

In the White Mountains, meadows formed during the Neopluvial. [14] Ice patches in the Beartooth Mountains [15] and glaciers grew in the Sierra Nevada, [16] sagebrush steppe, green Mormon tea and other vegetation expanded in the Great Salt Lake region, [17] marshes expanded in the central and northern Great Basin, [18] mammal communities in the Lake Bonneville basin changed with the return of the long-tailed pocket mouse, the Great Basin pocket mouse and the Western harvest mouse to sites where they were not present before and increased abundances of even-toed ungulates, [19] and tree lines dropped, with the lower limit of wooden vegetation penetrating into deserts. [20] Counterintuitively, higher tree line elevations in the Lake Bonneville area occurred during the Neopluvial, which may indicate warmer summers. [21] The end of the neopluvial may align with a change of speckled dace populations. [22]

In the Owens Valley region, during the Neopluvial the human population became more sedentary and trans-Sierra Nevada trade became established ("Newberry"/"Middle Archaic Period"). [23] Population around Lake Alvord increased during this time and lasted even after the Neopluvial had ended there. [3] In Nevada, the largest indigenous houses were built during the neopluvial. [24]

Chronology

The beginning of the Neopluvial occurred about 6,000 years before present, but did not occur everywhere at the same time: [12]

The Neopluvial is in part correlative to the Neoglacial, [18] and might have been caused by a change in winter conditions over the North Pacific. [27] This cooling is primarily explained by steadily declining summer insolation, though synchronous patterns in hydrological responses at sub-millennial scales may be linked to atmospheric circulation shifts driven by factors such as internal variability in ocean-atmosphere teleconnections. [26] Strengthening ENSO variability, a cooling of the North Pacific and a southward shift of the Pacific jet stream also coincided with the Neopluvial. [28] The neopluvial resembles the Pluvial period that occurred in western North America during the late Last Glacial Maximum, [29] but was much weaker than the LGM wet period. [4]

Terminology

The term "neopluvial" was coined in 1982 and originally referred to high lake levels in Summer Lake. [10] The term has also been used for a mid-to-late Holocene phase of increased moisture noted in the form of increased wetness in eastern Texas, potentially linked to a stronger monsoon or to the neopluvial of the western US. [30]

References

  1. ↑ Hockett 2015, p. 293.
  2. ↑ Hockett 2015, p. 299.
  3. 1 2 3 Pettigrew, Richard M. (1984). "Prehistoric Human Land-use Patterns in the Alvord Basin, Southeastern Oregon". Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. 6 (1): 82–83. JSTOR   27825172 – via eScholarship.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Madsen 2000, p. 157.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Noble, Paula; Zimmerman, Susan; Ball, Ian; Adams, Kenneth; Maloney, Jillian; Smith, Shane (2016-04-01). "Late Holocene subalpine lake sediments record a multi-proxy shift to increased aridity at 3.65 kyr BP, following a millennial-scale neopluvial interval in the Lake Tahoe watershed and western Great Basin, USA". EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts. 18: EPSC2016–7533. Bibcode:2016EGUGA..18.7533N.
  6. 1 2 3 Yuan, Koran & Valdez 2013, p. 155.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Jones, Terry L.; Klar, Kathryn; Archaeology, Society for California (2007). California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Rowman Altamira. p. 33. ISBN   9780759108721.
  8. 1 2 "AN EARTHQUAKE CLUSTER FOLLOWED THE DRYING OF PLEISTOCENE LAKE CHEWAUCAN, CENTRAL OREGON BASIN AND RANGE". gsa.confex.com. Retrieved 2017-07-06.
  9. 1 2 3 Negrini, Robert M.; Wigand, Peter E.; Draucker, Sara; Gobalet, Kenneth; Gardner, Jill K.; Sutton, Mark Q.; Yohe, Robert M. (2006-07-01). "The Rambla highstand shoreline and the Holocene lake-level history of Tulare Lake, California, USA". Quaternary Science Reviews. 25 (13): 1614. Bibcode:2006QSRv...25.1599N. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2005.11.014.
  10. 1 2 Adams, Kenneth D.; Rhodes, Edward J. (2019). "Late Pleistocene to present lake-level fluctuations at Pyramid and Winnemucca lakes, Nevada, USA" . Quaternary Research. 92 (1): 24. Bibcode:2019QuRes..92..146A. doi:10.1017/qua.2018.134. ISSN   0033-5894. S2CID   135235470.
  11. ↑ "HOW WET CAN IT GET? DEFINING FUTURE CLIMATE EXTREMES BASED ON LATE HOLOCENE LAKE-LEVEL RECORDS". gsa.confex.com. Retrieved 2017-07-06.
  12. 1 2 3 Noble et al. 2016, p. 206.
  13. 1 2 Badger, Thomas C.; Watters, Robert J. (2004-05-01). "Gigantic seismogenic landslides of Summer Lake basin, south-central Oregon". GSA Bulletin. 116 (5–6): 619. Bibcode:2004GSAB..116..687B. doi:10.1130/B25333.1. ISSN   0016-7606.
  14. ↑ Ababneh, Linah; Woolfenden, Wallace (2010-03-15). "Monitoring for potential effects of climate change on the vegetation of two alpine meadows in the White Mountains of California, USA". Quaternary International. 23rd Pacific Climate Workshop (PACLIM). 215 (1): 4. Bibcode:2010QuInt.215....3A. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2009.05.013.
  15. ↑ Chellman, Nathan; Pederson, Gregory T.; Lee, Craig M.; McWethy, David B.; Puseman, Kathryn; Stone, Jeffery R.; Brown, Sabrina R.; McConnell, Joseph R. (December 2020). "High elevation ice patch documents Holocene climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains". Quaternary Science Advances. 3: 16–17. doi: 10.1016/j.qsa.2020.100021 . ISSN   2666-0334.
  16. 1 2 Noble et al. 2016, p. 207.
  17. ↑ Madsen 2000, p. 161.
  18. 1 2 3 Hockett 2015, p. 292.
  19. ↑ Oviatt & Shroder 2016, p. 363-364.
  20. ↑ Westfall, Robert D; Millar, Constance I (2004-08-11). "Genetic consequences of forest population dynamics influenced by historic climatic variability in the western USA". Forest Ecology and Management. Dynamics and Conservation of Genetic Diversity in Forest Ecology. 197 (1): 160. Bibcode:2004ForEM.197..159W. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2004.05.011. S2CID   85791011.
  21. ↑ Oviatt & Shroder 2016, p. 278.
  22. ↑ Sidlauskas, Brian L.; Mathur, Samarth; Aydoğan, Hakan; Monzyk, Fred R.; Black, Andrew N. (4 January 2024). "Genetic approaches reveal a healthy population and an unexpectedly recent origin for an isolated desert spring fish". BMC Ecology and Evolution. 24 (1): 15. doi: 10.1186/s12862-023-02191-1 . PMC   10765885 . PMID   38177987.
  23. ↑ Ababneh, Linah (2008-09-01). "Bristlecone pine paleoclimatic model for archeological patterns in the White Mountain of California". Quaternary International. The 22nd Pacific Climate Workshop. 188 (1): 63. Bibcode:2008QuInt.188...59A. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.08.041.
  24. ↑ Hockett, Bryan; Dillingham, Eric (2023). Large-Scale Traps of the Great Basin. Texas A&M University Press. p. 37.
  25. ↑ Noble et al. 2016, p. 208.
  26. 1 2 Shuman & Serravezza 2017, p. 74.
  27. ↑ Yuan, Koran & Valdez 2013, p. 157.
  28. ↑ Liu, Tao; Ji, Lin; Baker, Victor R.; Harden, Tessa M.; Cline, Michael L. (5 February 2020). "Holocene extreme paleofloods and their climatological context, Upper Colorado River Basin, USA". Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment. 44 (5): 13. Bibcode:2020PrPG...44..727L. doi:10.1177/0309133320904038. S2CID   213001302.
  29. ↑ Yuan, Koran & Valdez 2013, p. 158.
  30. ↑ Wilkins, David E.; Currey, Donald R. (1999-04-01). "Radiocarbon chronology andδ13C analysis of mid-to late-Holocene aeolian environments, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas, USA". The Holocene. 9 (3): 368. Bibcode:1999Holoc...9..363W. doi:10.1191/095968399677728249. ISSN   0959-6836. S2CID   129122964.

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