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A northwest North American training set: distribution of freshwater midges in relation to air temperature and lake depth

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Abstract

Freshwater midges, consisting of Chironomidae, Chaoboridae and Ceratopogonidae, were assessed as a biological proxy for palaeoclimate in eastern Beringia. The northwest North American training set consists of midge assemblages and data for 17 environmental variables collected from 145 lakes in Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and the Canadian Arctic Islands. Canonical correspondence analyses (CCA) revealed that mean July air temperature, lake depth, arctic tundra vegetation, alpine tundra vegetation, pH, dissolved organic carbon, lichen woodland vegetation and surface area contributed significantly to explaining midge distribution. Weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS) was used to develop midge inference models for mean July air temperature (r 2boot  = 0.818, RMSEP = 1.46°C), and transformed depth (ln (x+1); r 2boot  = 0.38, and RMSEP = 0.58).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, V5A 1S6

    Erin M. Barley & Rolf W. Mathewes

  2. Departments of Biology, and Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, Canada, V1V 1V7

    Ian R. Walker

  3. Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, E3B 6E1

    Joshua Kurek & Les C. Cwynar

  4. Department of Geography and Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5

    Konrad Gajewski

  5. Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA

    Bruce P. Finney

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  1. Erin M. Barley
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  2. Ian R. Walker
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  3. Joshua Kurek
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  4. Les C. Cwynar
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  5. Rolf W. Mathewes
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  6. Konrad Gajewski
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  7. Bruce P. Finney
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Correspondence to Ian R. Walker.

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Barley, E.M., Walker, I.R., Kurek, J. et al. A northwest North American training set: distribution of freshwater midges in relation to air temperature and lake depth. J Paleolimnol 36, 295–314 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-006-0014-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-006-0014-6

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