15,000 Years of vegetation change in the Bonneville basin: the Blue Lake pollen record

Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging picture of late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental change in the Bonneville basin, western North America, through analysis of pollen and sediments from the Blue Lake marsh system, a major wetland area located on the western margin of the Great Salt Lake desert. Analyses of data obtained from the upper 4 m of the Blue Lake core suggest that during the latest Pleistocene, when Lake Bonneville covered the Blue Lake site, pine and sagebrush dominated terrestrial plant communities. These steppe-woodland taxa declined in abundance after ∼12 cal ka BP. Wetland plant communities developed at or nearby Blue Lake by ∼11.9 cal ka BP and bulrush-dominated marshes were established no later than 10.8 cal ka BP. The Blue Lake wetlands largely desiccated during a dry and warm early middle Holocene ∼8.3–6.5 cal ka BP. Climatic amelioration starting ∼6.5 cal ka BP is marked principally by a local return of marshes at the expense of playa and grass meadow communities, and a regional increase in sagebrush relative to other dryland shrubs. Singleleaf pinyon pine migrated into the nearby Goshute Mountains after ∼8 cal ka BP. Late Holocene fluctuations include cool intervals from ∼4.4 to 3.4 and ∼2.7 to 1.5 cal ka BP and warmer conditions from 3.4 to 2.7 cal BP and after 1.5 cal ka BP.