Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:54:36.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Vegetation Record of a Mid-Wisconsin Interstadial in Northwest Georgia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

W.A. Watts
W.A. Watts*
Affiliation:
School of Botany, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

At Green Pond, a small permanent sinkhole pond in Bartow County, northwest Georgia, organic silty clays are buried by up to 2 m of colluvium. Pollen from the clays shows that a Pinus-Quercus-herb (pine-oak-herb) flora was present before 29,630 radiocarbon yr ago. It is interpreted as the product of a xeric woodland with prairie-like openings. Between 29,630 and approximately 25,000 BP, pollen of Pinus and herbs was sparse; Quercus and Carya (hickory) predominated in the pollen rain. There were few other deciduous trees. Oak-hickory forest is thought to have been present. From 25,000 to 23,000 BP, more diverse forest with pines and some Picea (spruce) became established. At the same time Taxodium (swamp cypress) was locally abundant, as were shrubs characteristic of Coastal Plain swamps. Some time after 23,000 BP, the pond basin filled with colluvium and no further sedimentation took place, other than thin muck sedimented on the bottom of the present Green Pond.

The sediments were first thought to be of Sangamon age because the pollen sequence has many of the characteristics of an interglacial cycle, but the radiocarbon dates correlate them firmly with the Farmdalian Interstadial. A comparison with known Farmdalian sites is made, but the important sites are in the northern United States and adjacent Canada, too far away to make a useful comparison of the details of pollen diagrams from the two areas. At another Bartow County pond site, Bob Black Pond (Watts, 1970), a flora predominantly of pine with spruce and oak was present immediately before 22,900 BP and a strikingly cold flora with jack-pine, spruce and northern herbs followed immediately after. The radiocarbon dates indicate that the sedimentary sequence at Bob Black Pond immediately follows that at Green Pond.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , August 1973 , pp. 257 - 268
Copyright
University of Washington

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Contribution 79, Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

References

American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature(1961). Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 45, 645–665.Google Scholar
Berry, E.W., (1907). Contributions to the Pleistocene flora of North Carolina. Journal of Geology 15, 338–349.Google Scholar
Berry, E.W., (1910). Additions to the Pleistocene flora of New Jersey. Torreya 10, 261–267.Google Scholar
Berry, E.W., (1911). Notes on the ancestry of the Bald Cypress. The Plant World 14, 39–45.Google Scholar
Berry, E.W., (1912). Pleistocene plants from the Blue Ridge of Virginia. American Journal of Science 34, 218–223.Google Scholar
Berti, A.A., (1971). Palynology and stratigraphy of the mid-Wisconsin in the Eastern Great Lakes region, North America. Ph.D. Thesis Univ. Western Ontario London, Ontario.Google Scholar
Braun, E.Lucy, (1964). Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America. Hafner Publishing Co New York.Google Scholar
Clark, R.C., (1971). The woody plants of Alabama. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 58, 99–242.Google Scholar
Cushing, E.J., (1964). Redeposited pollen in late-Wisconsin pollen spectra from east-central Minnesota. American Journal of Science 262, 1075–1088.Google Scholar
Dreimanis, A., Terasmae, J., McKenzie, G.D., (1966). The Port Talbot Interstade of the Wisconsin Glaciation. Canadian Journal of Earth Science 3, 305–325.Google Scholar
Frey, D.G., (1951). Pollen succession in the sediments of Singletary Lake, North Carolina. Ecology 32, 518–533.Google Scholar
Greear, P.F-C., (1967). Composition, diversity, and structure of the vegetation of some natural ponds in northwest Georgia. Doctoral thesis University of Georgia Athens.Google Scholar
Grüger, E., (1972a). Pollen and seed studies of Wisconsin vegetation in Illinois. Geological Society of America Bulletin 83, 2715–2734.Google Scholar
Grüger, E., (1972b). Late-Quaternary vegetation development in south-central Illinois. Quaternary Research 2, 217–231.Google Scholar
Hobson, G.D., Terasmae, J., (1969). Pleistocene geology of the buried St. David's gorge, Niagara Falls, Ontario: geophysical and palynological studies. Geological Survey of Canada Paper 68.Google Scholar
Holmes, J.A., (1885). Taxodium (Cypress) in North Carolina Quaternary. Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Society for 1884–1885 92–93.Google Scholar
Kapp, R.O., Gooding, A.M., (1964). Pleistocene vegetational studies in the Whitewater Basin, southeastern Indiana. Journal of Geology 72, 307–326.Google Scholar
Knox, A.S., (1962). Pollen from the Pleistocene terrace deposits of Washington, D.C. Pollen et Spores 4, 357–358(abstract).Google Scholar
Little, E.R., (1971). Atlas of United States trees. Vol. 1. Conifers and important hardwoods. U.S. Department of Agriculture Misc. Publ. 1146, U.S. Govt. Printing Office Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Mohr, C., (1901). Plant life of Alabama. Contributions from the U.S. National Herbarium 6, U.S. Govt. Printing Office Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Radford, A.E., Ahles, H.E., Bell, C.R., (1968). Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas. Univ. of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Sirkin, L.A., Owens, J.P., Minard, J.P., Rubin, M., (1970). Palynology of some upper Quaternary peat samples from the New Jersey coastal plain. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 700-D, 77–87.Google Scholar
Watts, W.A., (1969). A pollen diagram from Mud Lake, Marion County, north-central Florida. Geological Society of America Bulletin 90, 631–642.Google Scholar
Watts, W.A., (1970). The full-glacial vegetation of northwestern Georgia. Ecology 51, 17–33.Google Scholar
Whitehead, D.R., (1967). Studies of full-glacial vegetation and climate in the southeastern United States. Cushing, E.J., Wright, H.E. Jr., Quaternary Paleoecology Yale University Press New Haven, Conn 237–248.Google Scholar
Whitehead, D.R., Doyle, M.V., (1969). Late Pleistocene peats from Long Beach, North Carolina. Southeastern Geology 10, 1–16.Google Scholar
Whitehead, D.R., Tan, K.W., (1969). Modern vegetation and pollen rain in Bladen County, North Carolina. Ecology 50, 235–248.Google Scholar
Willman, H.B., Frye, J.C., (1970). Pleistocene stratigraphy of Illinois. Illinois State Geological Survey Bulletin 94, .Google Scholar