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David P. Adam

Publications and source records attributed to David P. Adam.

34 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Pollen counts from core 7, Clear Lake, Lake County, California

The U. S. Geological Survey recovered eight sediment cores from beneath Clear Lake, Lake County, California, in 1973. The locations of the core sites are shown in fig. 1; lithologic descriptions of the cores, as well as radiographs, have been given by Sims and Rymer (1975a-g, 1976). A list of the procedures followed in sampling the cores and a list of the samples taken may be found in Beaver and others (1975); fish remains from two of the cores have been studied by Casteel and others (1975, 1977a,1977b). This report gives raw count data for 72 pollen samples from core 7, a 27.4-m long core from the southern or Highlands Arm of the lake (fig. 1). Pollen counts for core 4, a 115-m core from the main basin of the lake, are given in Adam (1979); that core spans the time interval between the end of the penultimate glacial period, about 130,000 years ago, and the present.

California

A preliminary annotated bibliography on siliceous algal cysts and scales

As part of an investigation of the stratigraphic and environmental distributions of siliceous algal resting cysts, we have assembled this bibliography. The emphasis is on papers that illustrate these cysts, and our annotation concentrates on the nature of the illustrations. In some cases, we have also listed taxonomic names of the species illustrated in the paper, as well as those of any new species described, but this part of the annotation is not yet complete. The taxonomic names given here are always those given by the original author. The references have been selected by starting with a few papers and extracting relevant titles from their reference lists. We have included not only relevant works, but also a few that sounded relevant but turned out not to be. This bibliography is, we believe, fairly complete for references that describe fossil occurrences of cysts, but much less thorough for the taxonomic literature. The list of references is still evolving, and we welcome additions or corrections. We have checked and verified many of the references listed here; those that we have not yet seen are indicated by an asterisk preceding the authorship. We have also indicated the source of each reference which we have not seen. Most such references were found in the reference lists of other papers listed here. Other references have been taken from the VanLandingham bibliography, which is an unpublished manuscript on file at the Diatom Library of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. We wish to thank Mrs. Margaret Hanna, curator of the Diatom Library at the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco) and Mrs. Jacquelyn Freeberg, of the USGS Menlo Park Library, for help in locating many of the references, which are often tantalizingly obscure. Some of the references are incomplete; they have been included anyway in order to preserve as much information as possible. For the same reason, the bibliographic style of the references is not consistent throughout; we prefer to include such information as the authors' full names and issue numbers of journals when we have it available, rather than discard good information about one paper just because we lack similar information about another.

Open-File Report

A Late Pleistocene and Holocene pollen record from Laguna de las Trancas, northern coastal Santa Cruz County, California

A 2.1-m core from Laguna de las Trancas, a marsh atop a landslide in northern Santa Cruz County, Calif., has yielded a pollen record for the period between about 30,000 B.P. and roughly 5,000 B.P. Three pollen zones are recognized; the earliest is characterized by high frequencies of pine pollen and is correlated with a mid-Wisconsinan interstade of the mid-continent. The middle zone contains high frequencies of both pine and fir (Abies, probably A. grandis) pollen and is correlated with the last full glacial interval (upper Wisconsinan). The upper zone is dominated by redwood (Sequoia) pollen and represents latest Pleistocene to middle Holocene. The past few thousand years are not represented in the core. The pollen evidence indicates that during the full glacial period the mean annual temperature at the site was about 2 ° C to 3 ° C lower than it is today. We attribute this small difference to the stabilizing effect of marine upwelling on the temperature regime in the immediate vicinity of the coast. Precipitation may have been about 20 percent higher as a result of longer winter wet seasons.

California

Pleistocene fishes from Alameda County, California

Six types of freshwater fishes were recovered from an early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) locality on the east side of San Francisco Bay, Alameda County, Calif. The fauna includes one centrarchid, one salmonid, three cyprinids, and one catostomid. The fauna indicates fluvial and slow-moving or lacustrine aquatic environments. One of the cyprinids and the catostomid are assigned to provisional genera because of the inadequate amount of material available for study and the obvious differences between these fossils and known fossil or recent fishes. They are new additions to the Pleistocene fish fauna of California. Paleogeographic distribution of some of these fishes indicates former fluvial or lacustrine connections between Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and California. The Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil fish faunas indicate the widespread occurrence of genera now endemic to California. A similar picture is presented by the molluscan evidence.

California

Geomorphic evidence for late Holocene tilting in southern San Mateo County, California

Relations between the stream channels and the alluvial deposits along Bradley Creek and the lower part of Butano Creek suggest that the area has been tilted very recently, and localized swampy conditions supply additional supporting evidence. Radiocarbon dates show that some of the valley alluvium along Butano Creek was deposited no more than 750-800 yr ago, and tilting must have Occurred since that time.

California

Modern pollen surface samples: An analysis of subsamples

Multiple subsamples of pollen samples obtained from the modern soil surface at two sites in southern Arizona were individually collected and analyzed to evaluate the practice of mixing subsamples when collecting modern surface samples. Results suggest that at least five subsamples must be mixed in order to avoid collecting a sample that is not representative of the local pollen rain.

Journal of Research of the U.S. Geological Survey

Palynological applications of principal component and cluster analyses

Two multivariate statistical methods are suggested to help describe patterns in pollen data that result from changes in the relative frequencies of pollen types produced by past climatic and environmental variations. These methods, based on a geometric model, compare samples by use of the product-moment correlation coefficient computed from data subjected to a centering transformation. If there are m samples and n pollen types, then the data can be regarded as a set of m points in an n -dimensional space. The first method, cluster analysis, produces a dendrograph or clustering tree in which samples are grouped with other samples on the basis of their similarity to each other. The second method, principal component analysis, produces a set of variates that arc linear combinations of the pollen samples, are uncorrelated with each other, and best describe the data using a minimum number of dimensions. This method is useful in reducing the dimensionality of data sets. A further transformation known as varimax rotation acts on a subset of the principal components to make them easier to interpret. Both methods offer the advantages of reproducibility of results and speed in pattern description. Once the patterns in the data have been described, however, they must be interpreted by the palynologist. An application of the methods in palynology is shown by using data from Osgood Swamp, Calif.

Journal of Research of the U.S. Geological Survey

Ice ages and the thermal equilibrium of the earth

A model for climatic change, and particularly for the changes of the late Cenozoic, involves as its primary variables the albedo of the earth and the heat storage characteristics of the oceans. Geography exerts a strong influence. The model proposed does not require metaphysical causes or astronomical events other than known variations in the earth's orbit.

Journal of Research of the U.S. Geological Survey

Early Pleistocene(?) pollen spectra from near Lake Tahoe, California

Fossil pollen was recovered at Tahoe City, Calif., from beneath a 1.9-m.y.-old volcanic flow. Pollen counts of four fossil samples are compared with soil-surface pollen samples from the Sierra Nevada. The presence of Picea (spruce) pollen in the fossil samples suggests that summer drought conditions in the central Sierra Nevada were less severe prior to 1.9 m.y. ago than they are now.

California