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Holocene aridity and storm phases, Gulf and Atlantic coasts, USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Ervin G. Otvos
Ervin G. Otvos*
Affiliation:
Department of Coastal Sciences and Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, University of Southern Mississippi, PO Box 7000, Ocean Springs, MS 39566-7000, USA
*
E-mail address: http://[email protected].
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Abstract

A bottomland flora that prevailed between ∼9900 and 6000 cal yr B.P. in a North Carolina stream valley may not reflect a regionally much wetter Atlantic climate, coeval with record drought in the Great Plains region and assumed dry Gulf coastal conditions. Such conditions were inferred for 6000 ± 1000 yr ago when the Bermuda High may have consistently occupied summer positions far to the NE. Arid episodes coeval with the Little River local wet interval are known from eolian sediments and pollen spectra in the Atlantic and the Gulf coastal plain. For multiple reasons, the regional extent, intensity, and duration of coastal aridity and alternating wet phases and the Bermuda High positions are not yet adequately constrained. The climate and edaphic causes for the steadily growing predominance of southern pines over hardwoods, achieved between ∼8900 and 4200 cal yr B.P. at different sites at different times are similarly still unresolved. New data from Shelby Lake, AL, reconfirms that no credible field or other proxy evidence exists for a previously postulated “catastrophic Gulf hurricane phase” in the late Holocene.

Keywords

Drought and wet phasesBermuda HighPine or hardwood dominanceHurricane proxiesClimate indicators“Storm quiescence”Mid–late Holocene transgression
Type
Scientific Communication
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , May 2005 , pp. 368 - 373
Copyright
University of Washington

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