Development of vegetation and climate in the southwestern United States
Van Devender TR and Spaulding WG. 1979. Development of vegetation and climate in the southwestern United States. Science. 204(4394):701-710
In the past 15 years, analysis of packrat (Neotoma spp.) middens has provided several hundred radiocarbon-dated fossil plant assemblages from now arid and semiarid regions in the southwestern United States. Packrats thoroughly sampled the vegetation on rocky slopes within 100 meters of the dry, protected shelters where middens are built and preserved. Many of the hundreds of plants in the fossil middens have been identified to species, allowing their distributions and autecologies to be used in paleoclimatic recontructions. Fossil middens allow detailed paleoecological reconstructions of past communities in areas with few other sources of perishable organic materials. On the basis of the packrat midden record, we describe here the vegetational changes and inferred climates during the past 22,000 years in the warm deserts of the southwestern United States.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Van Devender, Thomas; Spaulding, W
- Units
- BIBE
- Keywords
- Climate Change, Packrat Middens, Paleoenvironment, Paleontology, Plants, Southwest US, Vegetation Change