Patterns and drivers of Holocene vegetational change near the prairie-forest ecotone in Minnesota: revisiting McAndrews' transect.

Abstract

Holocene vegetational dynamics along the prairie-forest border of Minnesota were first documented in McAndrews' classic work. Despite numerous subsequent paleo-studies, a number of questions remain unanswered about the vegetation history of the region. Here, pollen, stable-isotope, mineral, and charcoal data are described from three lakes near McAndrews' sites. These data were compared with other paleoenvironmental records to reconstruct vegetation, aridity, and fire. The climate was relatively wet with increasing summer temperatures before approximately 8000 yr before present (BP). The rates of changes were asymmetric for the onset and termination of middle-Holocene aridity, with an abrupt increase at approximately 8000 yr BP and a gradual, but variable, decline from approximately 7800 to 4000 yr BP. Early-Holocene coniferous forests changed to mixed-grass prairie without an intervening period of tallgrass prairie or deciduous forest, whereas the retreat of prairie was characterized by transitions from mixed-grass to tallgrass prairie to deciduous forest and finally to coniferous forest. Within the middle Holocene, the composition and structures of grass-dominated vegetation varied both temporally and spatially. Fire primarily responded to changes in climate and fuel loads. Vegetation was more strongly influenced by climatic changes than by fire-regime shifts.