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Grassland Vegetation in the Southern Great Plains during the Last Glacial Maximum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Stephen A. Hall  and
Salvatore Valastro Jr.
Stephen A. Hall
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712
Salvatore Valastro Jr.
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Laboratory, J. J. Pickle Research Campus, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758
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Abstract

New pollen records from White Lake in the Southern High Plains and from Friesenhahn Cave on the southeastern Edwards Plateau of Texas indicate that the glacial-age vegetation of the southern Great Plains was a grassland. The High Plains was a treeless Artemisia grassland and the Edwards Plateau, at the south edge of the Great Plains, was a grassland with pinyon pines and deciduous trees in canyons and riparian habitats. The glacial-age grasslands differ from modern shortgrass and tallgrass prairies and may have no modern analog. The dominance of prairie vegetation during the last glacial maximum is compatible with late Pleistocene mammalian faunas and late-glacial grassland pollen records from the region. Earlier interpretations of a pine-spruce forest on the High Plains were based on pollen assemblages that are here shown to have been altered by postdepositional deterioration, resulting in differential preservation of conifer pollen grains. Accordingly, the "Tahoka Pluvial" and other "climatic episodes" defined by High Plains pollen records are abandoned.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , September 1995 , pp. 237 - 245
Copyright
University of Washington

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