FROM POND TO PEAT: POST-GLACIAL TO PRESENT CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUCCESSION FROM THE MACROFOSSIL RECORD OF A CENTRAL NEW YORK PEAT BOG

Succession of dominant arboreal species in the paleobotanical record has been a key instrument in demonstrating climate and environmental change from the Late Glacial Period to the present in the northeastern United States. Past studies of pollen data found in sediment cores from sites in the Northeast indicate that since the end of the Late Glacial Period, there has been a shift from colder climates supporting spruce-fir-grassland environments to progressively moister, warmer climates of pine-hemlock forests to still warmer, drier oak-birch-beech-hemlock forest associations (Webb 1993; Cox 1959). While pollen records provide a broad regional picture of changing vegetation assemblages through time, the analysis of plant macrofossils preserved in lake and bog sediments provides a more detailed, species-specific understanding of prior vegetation and succession in the immediate ecosystem. In New York State, the regional coverage of macrofossil studies is poor, and few studies exist for the Finger Lakes region in particular.

We report here the latest results from the macrofossil record at Purvis Road Bog, an ombrotrophic peat bog near Dryden, New York, that is located in the basin of a glacial kettle pond that has progressively filled in with organic material since the Late Glacial Period. The macrofossils analyzed were sampled from sediment cores obtained from basal depths with a Russian peat corer from four areas on the bog in 2006 and a radiocarbon dated core obtained in 2004. We analyze changes in terrestrial and aquatic macrofossil species distribution in relation to six identified lithological zones in the cores. We also provide a general reconstruction of the succession from kettle pond to bog at Purvis indicated by the macrofossil record and place these changes within the broader climate history of the northeastern United States during the last 13,000 years.