Books in Quaternary geology

Quaternary Glaciations - Extent and Chronology

1st Edition
Volume 2
June 8, 2004
J. Ehlers + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 0 5 4 0 1 4 6

This book is the first of three volumes in which the recent knowledge of the extent and chronology of Quaternary glaciations has been compiled on a global scale. This information is seen as a fundamental requirement, not only for the glacial workers, but for the wider user-community of general Quaternary workers. In particular the need for accurate ice-front positions is a basic requirement for the rapidly growing field of palaeoclimate modelling. In order to provide the information for the widest-possible range of users in the most accessible form, a series of digital maps was prepared.The glacial limits were mapped in ArcView, the Geographical Information System (GIS) used by the work group. Digital maps, showing glacial limits, end moraines, ice-dammed lakes, glacier-induced drainage diversions and the locations of key sections through which the glacial limits are defined and dated are included. For major parts of Europe also the extent of the maximum Eemian transgression has been indicated. The digital maps in this volume cover all of Europe and parts of northwestern Siberia. Both overview maps and more detailed maps are provided.

The Quaternary Period in the United States

1st Edition
Volume 1
December 17, 2003
A.R. Gillespie + 2 more
English
Hardback
9 7 8 0 4 4 4 5 1 4 7 0 7
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 0 4 7 4 0 9 0

This book reviews advances in understanding of the past ca. two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.

Ice Age Southern Andes

1st Edition
Volume 3
November 12, 2003
C.J. Heusser
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 0 5 3 4 3 8 1

The Southern Andes, stretching from the subtropics to the subantarctic, are ideally located for palaeoenvironmental research. Over the broad and continuous latitudinal extent of the cordillera (-24˚), vegetation is adjusted to climatic gradients and atmospheric circulation patterns.Opposed to the prevailing Southern Westerlies, the Southern Andes are positioned to receive the brunt of the winds, while biota are set to record the shifting of incoming storm systems over time. Sequential, latitudinally-placed... sedimentary deposits containing microfossils and macroremains, as archives of past vegetation and climate, make possible the detection of equatorward and poleward displacement of plant communities and, as a consequence, changes in climatic controls. No terrestrial setting in the Southern Hemisphere is so unique for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction during and since the last ice age. Twenty radiocarbon-dated fossil pollen and spore records chosen to place emphasis on the last ice age include high-resolution, submillennial data sets that also cover the Holocene, thus providing contrast between present interglacial and past glacial ages. From a refined data base, the records constitute the foundation for interpreting factors responsible for vegetation change over >50,000 14C years, glacial-interglacial migration and refugial patterns for a diversity of taxa, and the extent of intrahemispheric and polar hemispheric synchroneity versus asynchroneity.

Quaternary Dating Methods

1st Edition
Volume 7
April 1, 2000
W.C. Mahaney
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 0 8 6 8 4 8 6

Global Palaeoclimate of the Late Cenozoic

1st Edition
Volume 12
March 20, 1990
V.A. Zubakov + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 0 8 6 8 5 3 0

This is a detailed description of the history and chronology of global climate based on event-signal stratigraphy. The history of global climate is described for the last fifty million years with the description for the last one million years in detail. Climatostratigraphic sequences of twelve key regions are taken as a basis, eight of them situated in the USSR territories. Chronology of climatic events of the Pleistocene, Pliocene and Miocene is developed based on palaeomagnetic and radiometric data. The authors' version of its correlation with oxygene-isotope scales of deep-sea sediments is given. Theoretical problems of climatic stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology are discussed, in particular, the causes of climatic change. The Northern Hemisphere palaeoclimatic reconstructions are made for the Holocene, Eemian and Pliocene temperature optima, considered as possible palaeoanalogues of climate of the 21st Century. The book is intended primarily for a wide circle of scientific workers, palaeoclimatologists and palaeogeographers, but will also interest geologists, biologists, palaeomagnetologists and archaeologists.

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