Appalachian Pasts, Arctic Futures
Appalachian Pasts, Arctic Futures

Author: Joanmarie Del Vecchio

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Understanding climate controls on topography and erosion rates reveal the underlying mechanisms operating on the landscape, allowing us to predict landscape response to climate perturbations. The onset of Quaternary glaciations represents a large climate perturbation to the Earth system, though a comparable climate shift is occurring today. Adjacent to continental ice sheets were cold but unglaciated landscapes underlain by permafrost, or perennially frozen soils. These periglacial landscapes would be particularly sensitive to warming: climate modulates soil erodibility, hydrology, and vegetation, such that erodibility varies not only in space but time on seasonal and millennial timescales. The unique combination of hillslope and fluvial processes of permafrost landscapes imply that there could be an erosional and topographic "signature" of permafrost processes compared to temperate climates. In this dissertation I explore whether and how the shape of the hillslopes and channels, as well as long-term erosion rates, are adjusted to periglacial conditions compared to temperate climates. I focus on the central Appalachian Mountains, which, like other mid-latitude settings, was underlain by permafrost during previous glacial periods, yet the relative magnitude of erosion during warm and cold climates, as well as in transition periods, remains unquantified. I generate a high-resolution climate and erosion record of a single warming phase to determine how specific climate factors affect hillslope erosion mechanisms. I pair these results with a Quaternary erosion record to show that periglacial conditions promote efficient hillslope erosion compared to temperate conditions. I then demonstrate that the permafrost-mediated hillslope and channel erosion dynamics inferred from sedimentary archives is also borne out in hillslope-channel form on paleoclimate gradients in central Appalachia. This thesis isolates the mechanisms through which periglaciation affects erosion rates and processes and quantifies the role past climates have played in Appalachia's modern geomorphology. I also show that these principles can be used to identify erosion signatures of ongoing warming in Arctic landscapes.

Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes
Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes

Author: Brian Huntley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 3642605990

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Numerous experts including ecologists, geneticists, paleontologists and climatologists, investigate the response of terrestrial organisms to changes in their environment. The volume comprises an introductory and a final chapter by the editors as well as another 35 contributions. These are divided into six sections: 1. past environmental changes - the late-Quaternary; 2. spatial responses to past changes; 3. mechanisms enabling spatial responses; 4. evolutionary responses to past changes; 5. mechanisms enabling evolutionary responses; 6. predicted future environmental changes and simulated responses. The overwhelming and unanimous conclusion of all contributors is that forecasted global environmental changes pose a severe threat to the integrity of ecosystems worldwide and to the survival of at least some species.

The Future of the Past
The Future of the Past

Author: Tamara Bray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-10-12

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1136543597

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To date, the notion of repatriation has been formulated as a highly polarized debate with museums, archaeologists, and anthropologists on one side, and Native Americans on the other. This volume offers both a retrospective and a prospective look at the topic of repatriation. By juxtaposing the divergent views of native peoples, anthropologists, museum professionals, and members of the legal profession, it illustrates the complexity of the repatriation issue.

Climate: Present, Past and Future (Routledge Revivals)
Climate: Present, Past and Future (Routledge Revivals)

Author: H. H. Lamb

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 1192

ISBN-13: 1136639683

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First published in 1977, the second volume of Climate: Present, Past and Future covers parts 3 and 4 of Professor Hubert Lamb’s seminal and pioneering study of climatology. Part 3 provides a survey of evidence of types of climates over the last million years, and of methods of dating that evidence. Through the earlier stages of the Earth’s development the book traces what is known of the various geographies presented by the drifting continents and indicates what can be learnt about climatic regimes and the causes of climatic change. From the last ice age to the present our knowledge of the succession of climates is summarized, indicating prevailing temperatures, rainfalls, wind and ocean current patterns where possible. Part 4 considers events during the fifteen years prior to the book’s initial publication, leading on to the problems of estimating the most probable future course of climatic development, and the influence of Man’s activities on climate. Alongside the reissue of volume 1, this Routledge Revival will be essential reading for anyone interested in both the causes and workings of climate and in the history of climatology itself.

Climate of the Past, Present and Future
Climate of the Past, Present and Future

Author: Javier Vinós

Publisher: Critical Science Press

Published: 2022-09-20

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 8412586700

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This book is an unorthodox ground-breaking scientific study on natural climate change and its contribution to ongoing multi-centennial global warming. The book critically reviews the effect of the following on climate: - Milankovitch cycles - abrupt glacial (Dansgaard-Oeschger) events - Holocene climate variability - the 1500-year cycle - solar activity - volcanic eruptions - greenhouse gases - energy transport Applying the scientific method to available evidence reveals that some of these phenomena are profoundly misunderstood by most researchers. Milankovitch cycles are tied to orbital obliquity, not to orbital precessional summer insolation; glacial megatides might have triggered abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger events; and tides are likely responsible for the related 1500-year climate cycle. Climate change affects volcanic eruptions more than the opposite; and secular variations in solar activity are more important to climate change during the Holocene than greenhouse gases. In this book, we see how important natural climate change has been on human societies of the past. It also produces new climate projections for the 21st century and when the next glaciation could happen. What emerges from this study of natural climate change is a central theme: Variations in the transport of energy from the tropics to the poles have been neglected as a cause of climate change, and solar activity variations affect climate by modulating this transport. The author tells us: –Transporting more energy from a greenhouse gas-rich region, the tropics, to a greenhouse gas-poor region, the poles, increases the amount of energy lost at the top of the atmosphere. The effect resembles a reduction in the greenhouse gas content.– The book presents the Winter-Gatekeeper Hypothesis on how variations in solar activity regulate Earth's energy transport and in so doing affect atmospheric circulation, the rotation of the planet, and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. This book is oriented toward students and academics in the climate sciences and climate anthropology and should also appeal to readers interested in the science of natural climate change. The repercussions of Climate of the Past, Present and Future are far reaching. By uncovering a strong natural climate change component, it provides a novel view of anthropogenic climate change, fossil energy use, and our future climate; a view quite different from the IPCC's gloomy projections.

Viewing the Future in the Past
Viewing the Future in the Past

Author: H. Thomas Foster II

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2016-05-05

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1611175879

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Viewing the Future in the Past is a collection of essays that represents a wide range of authors, loci, and subjects that together demonstrate the value and necessity of looking at environmental problems as a long-term process that involves humans as a causal factor. Editors H. Thomas Foster, II, Lisa M. Paciulli, and David J. Goldstein argue that it is increasingly apparent to environmental and earth sciences experts that humans have had a profound effect on the physical, climatological, and biological earth. Consequently, they suggest that understanding any aspect of the earth within the last ten thousand years means understanding the density and activities of Homo sapiens. The essays reveal the ways in which archaeologists and anthropologists have devised methodological and theoretical tools and applied them to pre-Columbian societies in the New World and ancient sites in the Middle East. Some of the authors demonstrate how these tools can be useful in examining modern societies. The contributors provide evidence that past and present ecosystems, economies, and landscapes must be understood through the study of human activity over millennia and across the globe.