Understanding Rapid and Gradual Climate Change from the Record in Large Lakes: Late Pleistocene and Holocene Sedimentation in Flathead Lake, Montana

University Of Montana, Missoula MT

Investigators

Abstract

This award uses funds to develop a multiproxy record of the paleohydrology and paleolimnology of Flathead Lake, Montana utilizing the discharge record into the lake from winter snowpack. This record will be used to determine the natural variability of extreme hydrologic events in the region and correlated to the position of the Alleutian Low, jet stream, and several climatic indices. Field work will be undertaken to obtain long cores from the lake and proxy indicators of discharge (grain size) and hydroclimate (diatoms and ostracodes) will be developed in the laboratory. Proxy indicators will be calibrated using existing short cores covering historic intervals before being applied to the longer down-core sequences. The broader impacts of this proposed research center on providing important information on the nature of abrupt climate change as well as the frequency, duration and magnitude of major hydrologic events in the region. These in turn are directly applicable to management of water resources and prediction of how anthropogenic changes will effect hydrology of the region.