Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 41 (2014): 4300–4307, doi:10.1002/2014GL060183.
Description:
Geophysical and sedimentary records from five lakes in Massachusetts reveal regionally coherent hydrologic variability during the Holocene. All of the lakes have risen since ~9.0 ka, but multicentury droughts after 5.6 ka repeatedly lowered their water levels. Quantified water level histories from the three best-studied lakes share 〉70% of their reconstructed variance. Four prominent low-water phases at 4.9–4.6, 4.2–3.9, 2.9–2.1, and 1.3–1.2 ka were synchronous across coastal lakes, even after accounting for age uncertainties. The droughts also affected sites up to ~200 km inland, but water level changes at 5.6–4.9 ka appear out of phase between inland and coastal lakes. During the enhanced multicentury variability after ~5.6 ka, droughts coincided with cooling in Greenland and may indicate circulation changes across the North Atlantic region. Overall, the records demonstrate that current water levels are exceptionally high and confirm the sensitivity of water resources in the northeast U.S. to climate change.
Description:
The National Science
Foundation (EAR-0602408, EAR-
1036191, and DEB-0816731 to Shuman;
EAR-0602380 to Donnelly) and the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
Ocean and Climate Change Institute
(Donnelly) funded this research.
Description:
2014-12-25
Keywords:
Holocene
;
Paleohydrology
;
Northeast U.S.
;
Ground-penetrating radar
;
Lake levels
;
Drought
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
application/msword
