Neoglaciation: Difference between revisions

Driven inexorably by the [[Milankovitch cycle]], cooler summers in higher latitudes of North America, which would cease to completely melt the annual snowfall, were masked at first by the presence of the slowly disappearing continental ice sheets, which persisted long after the astronomically calculated [[Hypsithermal|moment of maximum summer warmth]]: "the neoglaciation can be said to have begun when the cooling caught up with the warming", remarked [[E. C. Pielou]].<ref>E.C. Pielou 1991:291; S.C. Porter and G.H. Denton, "Chronology of the neo-glaciation in the North American cordillera", ''American Journal of Science'' '''265''' (1967:177-210), noted in E.C. Pielou, ''After the Ice Age: the Return of Life to Glaciated North America'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1991:15 note 13. Pielou discusses the neoglaciation in ch. 14 "The Neoglaciation" pp 291-310.</ref> With the close of the "[[Little Ice Age]]" (mid 14th to late 19th centuries), neoglaciation appears to have been stalled in the late 20th century, assumed to be caused by [[human impact on the environment|anthropogenic]] [[global warming]]. Whether it has been temporarily or semi-permanently stalled, neoglaciation has been marked by a retreat from the warm conditions of the [[Holocene Climatic Optimum|Climatic Optimum]] and the advance or reformation of [[glacier]]s that had not existed since the last [[ice age]]. In the mountains of western North America, montane glaciers that had completely melted reformed shortly before 5000 [[Before Present|BP]].<ref>Pielou 1991:291; [[geomorphology]] of [[glacial moraine]]s suggest that mountain glaciers in [[British Columbia]] have advanced and receded twice more recently, with advances peaking about 2800 BP and 300 BP (noting G.H. Denton and W. Karlen, ""Holocene climatic variations— their pattern and possible cause", ''Quaternary Research'' '''3''' 1973:155-205), and J.M. Ryder and B. Thomson, "Neoglaciation in the Southern Coast mountains of British Columbia: chronology prior to the Late Neoglacial Maximum", ''Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences'' '''23''' 1986:273-87.</ref> The most severe part of the best documented neoglacial period, especially in Europe and the North Atlantic, is termed the "[[Little Ice Age]]".

In North America, neoglaciation had ecological effects in the spread of [[muskeg]] on flat, poorly drained land, such as the bed of recently-drained [[Lake Agassiz]] and in the [[Hudson Bay]] lowlands, in the retreat of grassland before an advancing forest border in the [[Great Plains]], and in shifting ranges of forest trees and [[Principle of faunal succession|diagnostic plant species]] (identified through [[palynology]]).