Sources of Sediment in Lake Pepin on the Upper Mississippi River in Response to Holocene Climatic Changes

Sediments from Lake Pepin on the Mississippi River, southeastern Minnesota, are used as provenance tracers to assess variations in hydrology and sediment-transport during the middle Holocene. Three rivers contribute sediment to Lake Pepin, and each catchment is characterized by a distinctly different geologic terrain. The geochemical fingerprint for each drainage basin was determined from the elemental composition of heavy minerals in the silt-sized fraction of modern sediment samples. Down-core elemental abundances were compared with these fingerprints by use of a chemical-mass-balance model that apportions sediment to the source areas. We observed a decreased contribution from the Minnesota River during the interval ~6700–5500 ¹⁴C yr BP, which we attribute to decreased discharge of the Minnesota River, likely controlled by a combination of precipitation, snow melt, and groundwater input to the river. This hydrologic condition coincides with the mid-Holocene prairie period recorded by fossil pollen data. The occurrence of this feature in a proxy record for hydrologic variations supports the hypothesis that the mid-Holocene prairie period reflects drier conditions than before or after in midwestern North America.     

Seasonal Diatom Variability and Paleolimnological Inferences – A Case Study

The seasonality of physical, chemical, and biological water variables is a major characteristic of temperate, dimictic lakes. Yet, few investigations have considered the potential information that is encoded in seasonal dynamics with respect to the paleolimnological record. We used a one-year sequence of diatoms obtained from sediment traps and water samples, as well as the sedimentary diatom record covering the past ca. 1000 years in Bates Pond, Connecticut (USA), to investigate which variables influence the seasonal distribution of diatoms and how this can be used for the interpretation of the fossil record. The seasonal patterns in diatom assemblages were related to stratification and, to a lesser extent, to nitrate, silica, and phosphorus. During mixing periods in spring and autumn, both planktonic and benthic species were collected in the traps, while few lightly silicified, spindle-shaped planktonic diatoms dominated during thermal stratification in summer. Changes in fossil diatom assemblages reflected human activity in the watershed after European settlement and subsequent recovery in the 20th century. A long-term trend in diatom assemblage change initiated before European settlement was probably related to increased length of mixing periods during the Little Ice Age, indicated by the increase of taxa that presently grow during mixing periods and by application of a preliminary seasonal temperature model. We argue that the analysis of seasonal diatom dynamics in temperate lakes may provide important information for the refinement of paleolimnological interpretations. However, investigations of several lakes and years would be desirable in order to establish a more robust seasonal data set for the enhancement of paleolimnological interpretations.     

Temporal patterns of suspended sediment yield following moderate to extreme hydrological events recorded in varved lacustrine sediments

A 487‐year annually laminated (varved) sediment record from Nicolay Lake, Cornwall Island, in the Canadian High Arctic was evaluated to determine the impact that years with high sediment yields had on sediment yields in subsequent years. All of the 40 largest years showed evidence for increased sediment yield in the subsequent 10–30 years. The positive anomalies in lagging years were approximately scaled according to the size of the initiating year, although many intermediate years (25‐ to 100‐year recurrence) showed weak or variable responses. The smallest events considered (10‐ to 25‐year recurrence) showed a consistent, but low‐amplitude response. Additionally the 10‐year events revealed frequent negative sediment yield anomalies in the preceding decade. This behaviour was interpreted as a frequent sediment activation cycle initiated by the modest year, and leading to sediment yield hysteresis lasting 15–25 years. The largest years (greater than 50‐year recurrence) showed consistently above‐average sediment yields in the preceding decade, in part due to the frequent occurrence of moderate (Q₁₀) years. It is hypothesized that temporary storage of sediment and previous initiation of erosion sites resulted in extraordinary sediment yields during intense summer rainfall events. This study demonstrates the potential use of varved lake sediment records to improve our understanding of long‐term sediment dynamics. These records present an opportunity to further develop and test sediment dynamic and routing models to gain insight into the interaction of time and space in fluvial and sediment delivery processes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Denudation and cooling of the Lake Teletskoye Region in the Altai Mountains (South Siberia) as revealed by apatite fission-track thermochronology

Lake Teletskoye occupies a narrow graben located in the northwestern sector of the Altai fold belt in South Siberia. The lake basin is thought to have formed during the Pleistocene as a distant result of the Cenozoic collision of India and Eurasia that caused a tectonic reactivation of the Palaeozoic Gorny–Altai (GA) and West Sayan (WS) blocks.The present work reports of a pilot fission-track study performed on 13 apatite separates collected from rocks that were sampled along two profiles in close proximity of the lake. The age–length data and AFT thermochronological modelling reveal two important phases of cooling in the Altai Mountains, a first one during the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous and a second one that started in the Miocene–Pliocene and that persists until today. The first event is interpreted to result from uplift-induced denudation probably related to the closure of the Mongol–Okhotsk Ocean; the second event can be linked to the young Cenozoic movements that lie at the origin of the formation of the Lake Teletskoye basin.     

Dissolved silica budget in the North basin of Lake Lugano

We studied the dissolved silica cycle in the water column of the North basin of Lake Lugano, Switzerland/Italy. Lake Lugano is a meromictic, eutrophic lake, permanently stratified below 100-m depth. A one-box model was used to calculate a silica mass-balance over 1993, based on various lake measurements, such as sediment traps, sediment cores, water analysis and biota countings. We found that the North basin of Lake Lugano is at steady state as far as dissolved silica is concerned. The primary source of dissolved silica in the lake is river input (about 80%), with diffusion from bottom sediments and groundwater input also playing a role. Atmospheric input is negligible. The main export of dissolved silica occurs via biogenic uptake by diatoms and final burial of their frustules in the bottom sediment. Loss of dissolved silica through the lake outflow only represents 15% of the total output. Of the total amount of Si exported to the lake bottom through diatom sinking, less than 20% is re-supplied to the surface water by diffusion. Thus, the lake acts as an important permanent sink for silica. The long residence time of dissolved silica in the lake (7 years) is related to the strong physical stratification of the lake. Only about 10% of the standing stock are available to phytoplankton uptake.     

湖北牛山湖高体鳑鮍的年龄、生长与繁殖

图 3　卵粒大小的频数分布 (ａ)具成熟卵细胞 (ｂ)无成熟卵细胞Ｆｉｇ 3ＦｒｅｑｕｅｎｃｙｄｉｓｔｒｉｂｕｔｉｏｎｏｆｅｇｇｓｉｚｅｏｆＲｈｏｄｅｕｓｏｃｅｌｌａｔｕｓ(ａ)ｗｉｔｈｓｏｍｅｍａｔｕｒｅｅｇｇｓ ,(ｂ)ｗｉｔｈｏｕｔｍａｔｕｒｅｄｅｇｇｓ图 4繁殖力 (Ｆ ,ｅｇｇｓ)与体重 (Ｗ ,ｇ)及全长 (ＴＬ ,ｍｍ )的关系Ｆｉｇ 4Ｒｅｌａｔｉｏｎｓｈｉｐｂｅｔｗｅｅｎｆｅｃｕｎｄｉｔｙ (Ｆ ,ｅｇｇｓ)ａｎｄｂｏｄｙｗｅｉｇｈｔ (Ｗ ,ｇ)ｏｒｔｏｔａｌｌｅｎｇｔｈ (ＴＬ ,ｍｍ)湖北牛山湖高体鳑鮍的年龄、生长与繁殖@…     

坝上高原安固里淖粒度年纹层与环境变化

在安固里淖湖心区获取一未扰动沉积物样柱，分析发现了由冬季风搬运物与湖心沉积共同形成的粒度年纹层，建立了纹层年表，恢复了安固里淖湖区8507aB.P，以来的环境变化过程。8507-5429aB.P。冬季风活动较弱，后期的所波动；5429-3244aB.P.冬季风活动较强，3244-2494aB.P。冬季风活动减弱；2494-1165aB.P。冬季风活动略有增强；1165aB.P以来，冬季风活动减弱。安固里小淖粒度年纹层反映的冬季风变化情况与我国北方地区同期的环境变化和海平面变化有很好的对应关系。     

GIS支持下青海湖地区草地蝗虫发生的地形分析

草地蝗虫发生的地形分析是建立草地蝗虫发生预报模型的基础，以青海湖地区为实验区，在Arc/Info和ArcView地理信息系统的支持下，进行草地蝗虫发生与各地形变量（包括海拔高度、坡度与坡向）的叠置分析，提取草地蝗虫发生的地形信息数据库，然后，分别采用T－检验（对连续变量－海拔高度和坡度）和卡方（Chisquare)检验（对类变量－坡向类型）进行各地形变量对草地蝗虫发生的差异显著性检验，结果表明，海拔高度和坡度对草地蝗虫发生的影响极为显著（显著性水平p=0.000)，而坡向地草地蝗虫发生的影响不是特别明显（显著性水平p=0.039)。     

A 1500-year record of climatic and environmental change in ElkLake, Minnesota I: Varve thickness and gray-scale density

The deepest part (29.5 m) of Elk Lake, ClearwaterCounty, northwestern Minnesota, contains a complete Holocene section that iscontinuously varved. The varve components are predominantly autochthonous(CaCO₃, organic matter, biogenic silica, and several iron andmanganese minerals), but the varves do contain a minor detrital-clastic(aluminosilicate) component that is predominantly wind-borne (eolian) andprovides an important record of atmospheric conditions. Singular spectrumanalysis (SSA) and wavelet analysis of varve thickness recognized significantperiodicities in the multicentennial and multidecadal bands that varied inpower (i.e., variable significance) and position (i.e., variable period) withinthe periodic bands. Persistent periodicities of about 10, 22, 40, and 90 years,and, in particular, multicentennial periodicities in varve thickness and otherproxy variables are similar to those in spectra of radiocarbon production, aproxy for past solar activity. This suggests that there may be a solar control,perhaps through geomagnetic effects on atmospheric circulation. Multicentennialand multidecadal periodicities also occur in wavelet spectra of relativegray-scale density. However, gray-scale density does not appear to correlatewith any of the measured proxy variables, and at this point we do not know whatcontrolled gray scale.