Stable source of Holocene spring precipitation recorded in leaf wax hydrogen-isotope ratios from two New York lakes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106357Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Organic matter source shifts from lacustrine to terrestrial in the earliest Holocene.

  • n-Alkane δD values are dependent on lake catchment characteristics.

  • Changes in δD during the late glacial may be due to precipitation or vegetation.

  • During the Holocene, growing season precipitation δD varies by ∼23‰.

  • Precipitation δD stability suggests stable synoptic spring atmospheric circulation.

Abstract

Changes in synoptic atmospheric circulation patterns are thought to play a role in establishing millennial scale climate periods during the end of the late glacial and the Holocene. In the northeastern United States, multi-proxy evidence documents fluctuations in effective moisture and temperatures for this time period, but constraining the relationship between atmospheric processes and these climate regimes is not straightforward. Because the hydrogen-isotope ratios of sedimentary terrestrial leaf waxes can reflect precipitation δD, these long-chain hydrocarbon compounds are an excellent tool to investigate moisture sourcing. Here we present lake sediment and leaf wax carbon- and hydrogen-isotope records that span the past ∼14.0 thousand years from Heart Lake and Moose Pond in the Adirondack Mountains (ADK), New York. High initial lake productivity after basin inception is reflected in low C:N ratios (<15), and higher relative short chain n-alkane (n-C17, n-C19, and n-C21) to long chain n-alkane (n-C27, n-C29 and n-C31) concentration ratios. The Holocene record is characterized by low bulk and n-alkane δ13C (∼ −28‰, ∼ −31‰, respectively), high ACL25-35 (∼28), and high relative concentrations of long chain n-alkane homologues, indicating a dominantly terrestrial source of organic matter for this time period. Hydrogen-isotope ratios of n-C29 n-alkane from both lake basins range only ∼20‰ through the Holocene and reconstructed precipitation δD (δDprecip) from both basins is in good agreement with that of modern modeled spring precipitation. This suggests there may have been no major changes in the sourcing of spring precipitation for the ADK throughout the time of record.

Introduction

Atmospheric circulation dynamics are a key component of a region’s climate system, but how these dynamics are integrated into past hydroclimate regimes remains a challenge to constrain. In the northeastern United States (here defined as New England and the upper Mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey), the end of the late glacial and the Holocene Epoch are a time of well-documented millennial-scale variability in temperatures and effective moisture (e.g. Cwynar and Spear, 2001; Foster et al., 2006; Hou et al., 2012; Hubeny et al., 2011; Kirby et al., 2002a,b; Marsicek et al., 2013; McFadden et al., 2005; Menking et al., 2012; Newby et al., 2009; Oswald et al., 2018; Shuman and Marsicek, 2016; Yu, 2000; Zhao et al., 2010a; Zhao et al., 2010b). Because air mass source and trajectory can greatly influence regional temperatures, precipitation amount and seasonality (e.g. Amini and Straus, 2019; Fukushima et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2019), it is possible that there is a relationship between late glacial and Holocene atmospheric circulation patterns and the hydroclimate variability observed in these proxy records (e.g. Gao et al., 2017; Hubeny et al., 2011; Kirby et al., 2002a,b; Liu et al., 2014; Shuman et al., 2006; Zhao et al., 2010a). Proxy records that document air mass source evolution can therefore provide insight into the significance of this relationship for sites in the northeastern United States from the end of the late glacial through the Holocene.

In order to understand past atmospheric circulation variability, hydrogen isotopes of terrestrial leaf waxes preserved in sediments have been used increasingly in recent years (e.g. Bhattacharya et al., 2018; Feakins et al., 2019; Thomas et al., 2016; Tierney et al., 2010). In the modern, leaf wax compounds have been shown to record the δD of the growth water the plant used during biosynthesis of these compounds. For terrestrial plants in temperate environments such as the northeastern United States, the growth water is the water available in the soil column during the time of leaf wax synthesis and production, and largely reflects δD of precipitation (Freimuth et al., 2020; Sachse et al., 2012 and references therein). The hydrogen isotopes of sedimentary leaf waxes for a temperate forest environment should therefore track precipitation δD through time, having the potential to record changes in hydroclimate due to atmospheric circulation reorganization (e.g. Rach et al., 2014).

Here we use terrestrial leaf wax biomarkers extracted from the sediments of two lakes in the Adirondack Mountains (ADK) of northern New York in order to evaluate precipitation source trends from the end of the late glacial through the Holocene for the northeastern United States. The modern climate of the ADK is influenced by the Pacific North American (PNA) and North American Oscillation (NAO) teleconnection patterns, as documented by correlation between these indices and, for example, monthly streamflow (Bradbury et al., 2002), winter snowfall totals (Hartley and Keables, 1998), and remote sensing wavelet analysis of precipitation and greenness (Mullon et al., 2013). The ADK also has been demonstrated to receive moisture seasonally from a variety of sources with dissimilar isotopic signals (Burnett et al., 2004; Puntsag et al., 2016). Thus, this site is ideally located to provide sediment records sensitive to shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns and concomitant changes in precipitation source. Furthermore, a wealth of previous studies conducted in the ADK investigating paleoecology (e.g. Jackson, 1989; Jackson and Whitehead, 1991; Lavoie et al., 2015; Overpeck, 1985; Whitehead and Jackson, 1990; Whitehead et al., 1989), lake development and acidification (e.g. Arseneau et al., 2016, 2011; Driscoll et al., 2016; Driscoll and Newton, 1985; Whitehead et al., 1989), soil chemistry (e.g. April et al., 2004; April and Newton, 1983; Sullivan et al., 2006; Zarfos et al., 2019) and modern leaf wax taphonomy and incorporation into lake sediments (Freimuth et al., 2020) aid in the interpretation and contextualization of the downcore leaf wax record. Finally, evaluating the two lake records in tandem will allow us to better deconvolve the signal of precipitation sourcing through time from other catchment specific influencing factors, to determine if atmospheric circulation patterns have shifted in step with other late glacial and Holocene climate variables, or if these patterns have remained largely continuous throughout the time of record.

Section snippets

Background and study site

The Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York comprise a 24,000 km2 geologic dome of Proterozoic origin, heavily dissected in the late Quaternary by continental ice during the last glaciation (Barth et al., 2019; Craft, 1979; Isachsen and Fisher, 1970). Total elevation within the ADK ranges from ∼40 m to ∼1,650 m above sea-level with the highest peaks occurring in the central to northeast section of the mountain range where both of the study lakes are located (Fig. 1). There are

Bulk sediment retrieval and analysis

Sediments were sampled at Heart Lake and Moose Pond in February 2017 using a Livingstone square-rod piston coring device. At both sites two adjacent cores were recovered offset in depth by ∼50 cm. All cores were wrapped in plastic wrap, stored in PVC tubing, and removed to the University of Cincinnati and St. Lawrence University. They were then split, described, and subsampled for loss-on-ignition, magnetic susceptibility, grain size, bulk sediment, lipid and radiocarbon analysis. Loss-on-

Results

The stratigraphic sections, bulk chemistry and isotope analyses of Heart Lake and Moose Pond provide information into the paleolimnological development of the two basins from lake inception after deglaciation to the modern day (Fig. 5, Fig. 6). Because both study sites are similar in stratigraphy, bulk sediment chemistry and compound-specific isotope analysis, we will structure the following section by analysis result as opposed to study site in order to better highlight where the two records

Basin development

The chemical, stable isotope, and radiocarbon records constructed from the Heart Lake and Moose Pond sediment cores demonstrate the developmental history of each basin. The age models of Heart Lake and Moose Pond constrain the timing of initial lacustrine sedimentation for both lakes to sometime during the end of the late glacial (Fig. 4). However, due to the lack of age control at the very base of both cores, we are unable to correlate the two lake records with each other by age for those

Conclusions

The Heart Lake and Moose Pond sediment and carbon-isotope records document lacustrine sedimentation beginning after ∼14.0 cal kyr BP. Colonization of the catchments by non-arboreal terrestrial vegetation followed shortly after, before the vegetation assemblage transitioned rapidly into that of a temperate forested environment. Initial levels of lake productivity dropped significantly in the earliest Holocene, concomitant with increases in sedimentary organic matter from vascular plants, which

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Anna K. Schartman: Writing - original draft, Formal analysis, Investigation, Visualization. Aaron F. Diefendorf: Conceptualization, Investigation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration. Thomas V. Lowell: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration. Erika J. Freimuth: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Alexander K. Stewart: Investigation, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Catherine Yansa for her help in identifying several macrofossils for radiocarbon analysis, Andrew Diefendorf for constructing the core refrigeration unit, and Helen Eifert and Elliot Boyd for field assistance. We also thank Jonathan DeSantis and Barbara Lucas-Wilson of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for their assistance with sampling permits, and the Adirondack Mountain Club for granting access to Heart Lake. Invaluable assistance was also

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