Vegetation and climate change in northwest America during the past 125 kyr

Abstract

Vegetation records spanning the past 21 kyr in western North America display spatial patterns of change that reflect the influence of variations in the large-scale controls of climate1. Among these controls are millennial-scale variations in the seasonal cycle of insolation and the size of the ice sheet, which affect regional climates directly through changes in temperature and net radiation, and indirectly by shifting atmospheric circulation. Longer vegetation records provide an opportunity to examine the regional response to different combinations of these large-scale controls, and whether non-climatic controls are important. But most of the longer North American records2,3 are of insufficient quality to allow a robust test, and the long European records4,5,6,7,8,9 are in regions where the vegetation response to climate is often difficult to separate from the response to ecological and anthropogenic controls. Here we present a 125-kyr record of vegetation and climate change for the forest/steppe border of the eastern Cascade Range, northwest America. Pollen data disclose alternations of forest and steppe that are consistent with variations in summer insolation and global ice-volume, and vegetational transitions correlate well with the marine isotope-stage boundaries. The close relationship between vegetation and climate beyond the Last Glacial Maximum provides evidence that climate variations are the primary cause of regional vegetation change on millennial timescales, and that non-climatic controls are secondary.