Late Pleistocene and Holocene Environmental Change on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

Gavin, Daniel; Brubaker, Linda

This book brings together decades of research on the modern natural environment and paleoenvironmental change since the Late Pleistocene of the Olympic Peninsula. Part 1 presents the modern environment and biogeography of the Olympic Peninsula. Rather than simply reviewing previous studies, we take advantage of a multitude of data sources to portray the gradients of climate, vegetation, and disturbance regimes on the peninsula. Inspired by atlases produced at the University of Oregon (Loy et al. 2001; Marcus et al. 2012), we extensively display prmary data in maps and graphics whenever it effectively supplements a point in the text. In Chapter1, the current climate gradients on the Peninsula and recent trends in climate over the past 100 years demonstrate how climate change is beginning to accelerate on the peninsula. ... In Chapter 2, we provide temporal depth to the patterns described in the first section. We review the original paleoecological studies from the Pacific Northwest and then turn our focus onto our paleoecological records of changing forest composition and fire over the last 14,500 years. Motivated by pioneering work in addressing ecological questions from the paleovegetation record (Delcourt and Delcourt 1991), we tackle a broad array of ecological questions of the mechanisms underlying the changes in forest communities over space and time. ... Chapter 3 presents the history of postglacial paleoclimate change on the Olympic Peninsula. Various records of past climate are synthesized, including the record of glaciation from the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago) to the present. Chapter 4 presents the postglacial vegetation history of the biota as determined from a set of pollen records, with five recently developed records receiving particular focus. Various means of data synthesis (for example, mapping paleoecological data and modern pollen analog methods) demonstrate changing vegetation patterns. This part of the analysis includes a review of over 30 paleoecological records from western Washington and southwest Britich Columbia. Chapter 5 presents a brief review of important archeological sites and places their occurrence in time and space in the context of the environmental changes occurring on the peninsula. Lastly, Chapter 6 presents several areas of knowledge gaps and additional needed research. This book does not explicitly address impacts of ongoing and projected climate changes on the peninsula. There are several assessments related to this topic (Jenkinset al. 2002; Halofsky et al 2011; Devine et al. 2012). However, the data presented here are relevant to understanding the mechanisms governing ecological change and historical precedents of the modern changing environment on the Olympic Peninsula.

Late Pleistocene and Holocene Environmental Change on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

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