Abstract
Raymond Basin and Bald Knob Basin, Montgomery County, Illinois, formed as kettles during Illinoian time. Fossil pollen from these basins provides information on vegetation and climate during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. The pollen profile at Raymond Basin contains an expanded Sangamonian section and an early Wisconsinan section, but both are missing the late Wisconsinan. The ages for the following pollen zones are estimated by correlation with the deep-sea δ18O record.
In the late Illinoian,Picea-Pinus pollen zone 1, dating from about 150–130 ka, represents an apparently closed boreal coniferous forest indicating a cold late-glacial climate. The Sangamonian includes three major pollen zones ranging from about 130–75 ka. The early Sangamonian is represented byQuercus-Ulmus-Carya-Fagus dominance in zone 2, indicating vegetation comparable to the modern deciduous forest and climate that was warm and moist. The middle Sangamonian in zone 3, which is characterized byAmbrosia-Poaceae-Cupressaceae-Quercus pollen, suggests a savanna vegetation and a warm, dry climate. The late Sangamonian is subdivided into aQuercus-Ulmus-Carya subzone (4a) that indicates a mesic forest and greater precipitation; aQuercus-Ambrosia subzone (4b) that suggests drier climate and savanna conditions; and aQuercus-Liquidambar-Carya subzone (4c), containing the ‘southeastern forest’ element,Liquidambar, suggesting the peak in warmth and moisture. The early Wisconsinan is represented by a transitionalPicea-Chenopodiineae zone (5). This unusual assemblage suggests a cool prairie-like vegetation, perhaps with scatteredPicea trees at the end of that depositional interval. The Middle Wisconsinan is marked by the return of high percentages ofPicea andPinus pollen in zone 6. The latest pollen zone (7) is dominated by Chenopodiineae pollen and is absent at Raymond Basin. It is most likely Holocene in age, and probably represents prairie conditions and warm, dry climate.
Apparent surface-temperature and apparent effective-moisture curves were derived from the first detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) axis of the pollen data. The first axis correlates well with the normalized deep-sea δ18O curve of sea surface temperature, and the second is controlled mainly by precipitation. The interglacial vegetation differs from that predicted by models driven by orbitally-induced insolation curves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adam, D. P., J. D. Sims & C. K. Throckmouton, 1981. 130 000-year continuous pollen record from Clear Lake, Lake County, California. Geology 9: 373–377.
Amundson, D. C. & H. E. Wright, Jr., 1979. Forest changes in Minnesota at the end of the Pleistocene. Ecol. Monogr. 49: 153–155.
Baker, R. G., A. E. Sullivan, G. R. Hallberg & D. G. Horton, 1989. Vegetational changes in western Illinois during the onset of late Wisconsinan glaciation. Ecology 70: 1363–1376.
Baker, R. G., D. P. Schwert, E. A. Bettis, III, T. J. Kemmis, D. G. Horton H. A. Semken, 1991. Mid-Wisconsinan stratigraphy and pale-oenvironments at the St. Charles site in south-central Iowa. Geological Society of America Bulletin 103: 210–220.
Baker, R. G., L. J. Maher, L. J. Chumbley & K. L. Van Zant, 1992. Patterns of Holocene environmental change in the midwestern United States. Quat. Res. 37: 379–389.
Bartlein, P. J., T. Webb III & E. Fleri, 1984. Holocene climatic change in the northern midwest: pollen-derived estimates. Quat. Res. 22: 361–374.
Bradley, R. S., 1985. Pollen analysis,in ‘Quaternary Paleoclimatology-Methods of Paleoclimatic Reconstruction’. Allen & Unwin, Boston: 304–329.
Broadhead, G. C., 1875. Chapter XII, Montgomery County. Geological Survey of Illinois Geology and Paleontology 4: 149–155.
Bryson, R. A., 1966. Air masses, streamlines and the boreal forest. Geographical Bulletin 8: 228–269.
Bryson, R. A. & W. M. Wendland, 1967. Tentative climatic patterns for some late-glacial and post-glacial episodes in Central North America,in ‘Life, Land and Water’ (ed. Mayer-Oaks, W. J.). Proceedings of the 1966 Conference on Environmental Studies of the Glacial Lake Agassiz Region, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg: 271–298.
Burns, R. M. & B. H. Honkala, 1990. ‘Silvics of North America’. Agriculture Handbook Volume 2. Washington D.C.
Chumbley, C. A., 1989. Late-glacial and Holocene vegetation of the Roberts Creek Basin, Northeast Iowa. Ph. D. thesis. The University of Iowa, 154 pp.
Chumbley, C. A., R. G. Baker & E. A. Bettis, III., 1990. Midwestern Holocene paleoenvironments revealed by floodplain deposits in northwestern Iowa. Science 249: 272–274.
Crowley, T. J. & K-Y Kim, 1994. Milankovitch forcing of the last interglacial Sea Level. Science 265: 1566–1568.
Curry, B. B., 1995. Late Pleistocene lithofacies, paleolimnology, and ostracode fauna of kettles on the Illinoian till plain, Illinois, U.S.A. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 510 pp.
Cwynar, L. C., E. Barden & J. H. McAndrews, 1979 An inexpensive sieving method for concentrating pollen and spores from fine-grained sediments. Can. J. Earth Sci. 16: 1115–1120.
Davis, A. M., 1977. The prairie-deciduous forest ecotone in the upper middle west. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67: 204–213.
Faegri & Iversen, 1975. ‘Textbook of Pollen Analysis’. 3rd ed. Hafner Press, New York, 295 pp.
Fehrenbacher, J. B., G. O. Walker & H. L. Wascher, 1967. Soils of Illinois. University of Illinois, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 725, 47 pp.
Fenneman, N. M., 1938. Physiography of the Eastern United States. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, 714 pp.
Fowells, H. A., 1965. ‘Silvics of Forest Trees of the United States’. Agricultural Handbook Number 271, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Gauch, H. G., Jr., 1982. ‘Multivariate Analysis in Community Ecology’. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 298 pp.
Grimm, E. C., 1987. CONISS: A Fortran 77 program for stratigraphically constrained cluster analysis by the method of incremental sum of squares. Computers and Geoscience 13: 13–35.
Grootes, P. M., M. Stuiver, J. W. C. White, S. Johnsen & J. Jouzel, 1993. Comparison of oxygen isotope records from the GISP2 and GRIP Greenland ice cores. Nature 366: 552–554.
Grüger, E., 1972a. Late Quaternary vegetation development in South-Central Illinois. Quat. Res. 2: 217–231.
Harrison, S. P., J. E. Kutzbach, I. C. Prentice, P. J. Behling & M. T. Sykes 1995. The response of northern hemisphere extratropical climate and vegetation to orbitally induced changes in insolation during the last interglaciation. Quat. Res. (in press).
Hill, M. O., 1979. DECORANA-a FORTRAN program for detrended correspondence analysis and reciprocal averaging. Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Hill, M. O. & H. G. Gauch, Jr., 1980. Detrended correspondence analysis: an improved ordination technique. Vegetatio 42: 47–58.
Holloway, R. G. & V. M. Bryant, Jr, 1985. Late-Quaternary pollen records and vegetational history of the Great Lakes Region: United States and Canada,in ‘Pollen Records of Late-Quaternary North American Sediments’: 205–245.
Jacobs, A. M., 1970. Persistence of lake basins in southern Illinois, U.S.A, from late Illinoian time to the present. Revue Geographie Physique et Geologic Dynamique 12: 137–142.
Jacobs, A. M. & J. A. Lineback, 1969. glacial geology of the Van dalia, Illinois region. Illinois State Geological Survey Urbane Circular 442: 1–23.
Kapp, R. O., 1969, ‘How to Know Pollen and Spores’. Wm. C. Brown Co. Pub. Dubuque, 249 pp.
Kapp, R. O. & A. M. Gooding, 1964. Pleistocene vegetation studies in the Whitewater Basins, Indiana. J. Geol. 72: 307–326.
Keigwin, L. D., W. B. I. Curry, S. J. Lehman & S. Johnsen, 1994. The role of the deep ocean in North Atlantic climate change between 70 and 130 kyr ago. Nature 371: 323–326.
Kim, H. K., 1986. Late-glacial and Holocene environment in central Iowa: a comparative study of pollen data from four sites. Ph.D. thesis. The University of Iowa, 134 pp.
King, J. E., 1973. Late Pleistocene palynology and biogeography of the western Missouri. Ecol. Monogr. 43: 539–565.
King, J. E., 1981. Late Quaternary vegetational history of Illinois. Ecol. Monogr. 51: 43–62.
Küchler, A. W., 1964. ‘Natural Vegetation of the Conterminous United States’. American Geographical Society Special Publication 36, 116 pp.
Kukla, G., 1989. Long continental records of climate — an introduction. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol. 72: 1–9.
Leighton, M. M., 1960. The classification of the Wisconsin glacial stage of north central United States. J. Geol. 68: 529–552.
Maher, L. J., 1972. Absolute pollen diagram of Redrock Lake, Boulder County, Colorado. Quat. Res. 2: 531–553.
Maher, L. J., 1982. The palynology of Devils Lake, Sauk County, Wisconsin,in ‘History of the Driftless Areal’ (ed. Knox, J. C., L. Clayton & D. M. Mickelson). University of Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey Field Trip Guide Book: 119–135.
Martinson, D. S., N. G. Pisias, J. D. Hays, J. Imbrie, T. C. Moore Jr. & N. J. Shackleton 1987. Age dating and the orbital theory of the Ice Ages: development of a high-resolution 0 to 300 000-year chronostratigraphy. Quat. Res. 27: 1–29.
McAndrews, J. H. 1966. Postglacial history of prairie, savanna, and forest in northwestern Minnesota. Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 22: 1–72.
McAndrews, J. H., A. A. Berti & G. Norris 1973. Key to the pollen and spores of the Great Lakes Region. Royal Ontario Museum of Life Sciences Miscellaneous Publication, 61 pp.
McManus, J. F., G. C. Bond, W. S. Broecker, S. Johnson, L. Labeyrie & S. Higgins, 1994. High-resolution climate records from the North Atlantic during the last interglacial. Nature 371: 326–329.
Moore, P. D., J. A. Webb & M. E. Collinson, 1991. ‘Pollen Analysis’. Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, London, 216 pp.
Moore, P. D. & J. A. Webb, 1978. ‘An Illustrated Guide to Pollen Analysis’. John Wiley and Sons New York, 133 pp.
Norton, E. A., R. S. Smith, E. E. Deturk, F. C. Bauer & L. H. Smith, 1932. Fayette County soils. University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station soil Report 52, 44 pp.
Ross, R. C. & H. C. M. Case, 1956. Types of farming in Illinois, an analysis of differences by area. University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 601, 88 pp.
Sims, J. D., D. P. Adam & M. J. Rymer, 1981. Late Pleistocene stratigraphy and palynology of Clear Lake. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1141: 219–230.
Van Zant, K. L., 1979. Late-glacial and postglacial pollen and plant macrofossils from Lake West Okoboji, northwestern Iowa. Quat. Res. 12: 358–380.
Waite, P. J., 1974. The climate of Iowa, in ‘Climates of the States’ Volume III Western States Including Alaska and Hawaii. Water Introduction Center, Inc., Water Research Building, Manhasset Isle, Port Washington, New York: 657–675.
Watts, W. A., 1983. Vegetation history of the eastern United States 25 000 to 10 000 years ago,in ‘Late-Quaternary Environments of the United States’ (ed. Wright, H. E., Jr.) Volume I ‘The Late Pleistocene’ (ed. Porter, S. C.). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 294–310.
Webb, T. III, E. J. Cushing & H. E. Wright, Jr. 1983. Holocene changes in the vegetation of the Midwest,in ‘Late Quaternary Environments of the United States’ Volume II: ‘The Holocene’ (ed. H. E. Wright, Jr.). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 142–165.
Webb, T. III & J. H. McAndrews 1976. Corresponding patterns of contemporary pollen and vegetation in central North America. Geological Society of America Memoir 145: 267–299.
Wendland, W. M., K. E. Kunkel, G. C. Conner, W. L. Decker, H. Hillaker, P. Naber-Knox, F. V. Nurnberger, J. Rogers, K. Scheeringa, K. Zandlo & J. Zandlo, 1992. Mean 1961–1990 temperature and precipitation over the upper Midwest. Midwestern Climate Center Research Report 92-01, Illinois State Water Survey, Champaign, Illinois, 27 pp.
Winkler, M. G., A. M. Swain & J. E. Kutzbach, 1986. Middle Holocene dry period in the northern midwestern United States: lake levels and pollen stratigraphy. Quat. Res. 25: 235–250.
Woillard, G. M. 1978. Grande Pile peat bog: a continuous pollen record for the last 140 000 years. Quat. Res. 9: 1–21.
Wright, E. H., Jr. 1989. The Quaternaryin ‘The Geology of North America’ Volume A ‘The Geology of North America — An overview’. The Geological Society of America: 513–536.
Zhu, H., 1994. Vegetation and climate of the last glacial-interglacial cycle in southern Illinois. University of Iowa Ph.D. Dissertation, 152 pp.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This is the 9th in a series of papers published in this special AMQUA issue. These papers were presented at the 1994 meeting of the American Quaternary Association held 19–22 June, 1994; at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Dr Linda C. K. Shane served as guest editor for these papers.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhu, H., Baker, R.G. Vegetation and climate of the last glacial-interglacial cycle in Southern Illinois, USA. J Paleolimnol 14, 337–354 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00682432
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00682432