Prospects for interregional correlations using Wisconsin and Holocene aridity episodes, northern Gulf of Mexico coastal plain

Abstract

Luminescence dating of extensive dune fields and associated eolian sandsheets provided a chronology of recently recognized Pleistocene and early Holocene dry climate episodes in the currently humid warm temperate northern–northeastern Gulf of Mexico region. Scattered parabolic dunes and clusters of intersecting parabolic dunes, along with elongated shore-transverse and shore-parallel dunes, developed. These landforms occur in a 390-km-long and 2- to 3-km-wide, semicontinuous belt in southeast Alabama and northwestern Florida. Dune elevations reach ± 22 m. Sangamon coastal barrier sectors were the primary source of the eolian sand. Deflation was coeval with early Wisconsin to mid-Holocene marine low sea-levels and associated distant shorelines . Early Holocene dune dates were synchronous, with indications of a hypsithermal dry interval in southeast Louisiana, the Yucatan, and the south Atlantic seaboard. Overlapping with dry episodes in Yucatan and the High Plains, Texas dunes and Louisiana and Texas prairie mounds, especially in the southwest Texas coast still dominated by dry climate, suggests intervals of early to late Holocene drought. The dates provide the basis for identifying and correlating Wisconsin, early, and late Holocene climate phases between currently semiarid and humid, coastal and interior areas. They contribute to future studies, including interregional paleoclimate modeling. Although Pleistocene coastal eolian deposition coincided with glaciation in the northern interior and with cooler temperatures of a reduced Gulf of Mexico, Holocene aridity phases may have been related to major variations in the position of high-pressure cells, storm tracks, and branches of the jet stream, and even to prolonged La Niña conditions.