How Does Climate Change Influence Alaska's Vegetation?: Insights from the Fossil Record

Members of the Engineering Geology and Ground Water Branches, U.S. Geological Survey

doi:10.3133/fs07197

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How Does Climate Change Influence Alaska's Vegetation?: Insights from the Fossil Record

Members of the Engineering Geology and Ground Water Branches, U.S. Geological Survey

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Abstract

Plant fossils, such as leaves, wood, cones, pollen, and seeds, provide important evidence of how Alaska's vegetation has responded to climate changes over time periods of centuries to millions of years. Long-term trends of global temperatures have been reconstructed from oxygen isotope measurements of microscopic fossils (foraminifera) in the Pacific Ocean (fig. 1) . This temperature curve can be used to compare the major changes in Alaskan vegetation with global climate changes spanning the past 20 million years.

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Members of the Engineering Geology and Ground Water Branches, U.S. Geological Survey. 1997. How Does Climate Change Influence Alaska's Vegetation?: Insights from the Fossil Record. https://doi.org/10.3133/fs07197

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