A COMPARISON OF LATE PLEISTOCENE AND HOLOCENE SEDIMENT RECORDS FROM WESTERN NEW YORK

The goal of this study is to compare the sediment records collected from Dragonfly Kettle Pond and Beaver Meadow in western New York (WNY) to newly collected sediment from Allenberg Bog, a nearby wetland located farther south and closer to the ice sheet limit than the previous two sites. The sediment recovered from these three wetland environments will provide information about the post-glacial history of the area and lead to a narrower constraint on deglaciation of western New York, an area with a poorly understood early deglacial history. Using a Russian Peat Corer and a Livingstone Corer, 3.1 m and 5.96 m of sediment was collected from Beaver Meadows (13BM-D) and Dragonfly Kettle Pond (13DFK-A), respectively. Similarly, at Allenberg Bog, the two aforementioned coring devices were used to recover the lowest 6.6 m (15ABB-7) and 0.3 m (15ABB-1) of sediment from two different sites located in the bog, with penetration depths of >14m below the bog surface. Moisture content, organic matter content, magnetic susceptibility and density measurements were collected at 5 cm resolution for most of the cores, with 1 cm resolutions in some sections. The cores comprise basal glacial sediment, overlain by lacustrine sediment, overlain by peat. Radiocarbon ages from Beaver Meadow and Dragonfly Kettle Pond sediments indicate that sediment accumulation began at 15.2 ka, and the transition from lacustrine to peat environment happened ~10.8 ka. Samples from Allenberg Bog are currently undergoing radiocarbon analysis to see if the transition from lacustrine to peat is around the same age. The results of this study will hopefully improve the constraints on deglaciation in WNY, and provide more insight into the composition and character of the sediment within each sediment core. Ultimately, this information will be important for reconstructing the environmental and climate history of WNY during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene.