Environmental Change

by Goudie, Andrew; Stokes, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780198742173
• ISBN10: 0198742177
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2099-11-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

We are in the grip of global warming, we are told: sea-levels are rising, glaciers are melting, meteorological events are becoming more extreme. But are these differences really a deviation from the norm, or are they merely part of an ongoing cycle of change? How can they be put into perspective?

Author Biography

Adrian Parker is Reader in the Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Andrew Goudie is Master of St. Cross College, Oxford, and Professor of Geography at the Oxford Centre for the Environment, UK. David Anderson is a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford Centre for the Environment, and Geography teacher at Eton College, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
A Framework for Understanding Environmental Change	p. 1
Introduction	p. 2
Subdividing geological time	p. 3
The evolution of ideas	p. 6
The 'Ice Age' discovery	p. 6
Lower latitudes	p. 6
Glacial and interglacial sequences	p. 8
The Holocene and the Late Glacial	p. 10
Sea-level change	p. 12
Early climate history of the Earth	p. 14
The Cainozoic climatic decline	p. 15
Environments of the Tertiary	p. 16
Explaining Tertiary climates	p. 17
The Tertiary/Quaternary transition	p. 19
Reconstructing and interpreting past environments: key concepts	p. 21
The law of superposition	p. 22
Diagenesis, equifinality, provenance, and taphonomy	p. 22
Uniformitarianism and neo-catastrophism	p. 23
Environmental systems	p. 25
Environmental modelling	p. 26
Selected reading for Chapter 1	p. 28
Sources of Envidence for Reconstructing Past Environments	p. 29
Introduction	p. 30
Terrestrial evidence	p. 30
Glacial evidence on land	p. 31
Evidence of periglaciation	p. 33
Palaeosols and wind-blown deposits	p. 34
Lake, peat, and fluvial deposits	p. 36
Cave deposits	p. 44
Tree rings	p. 45
Geomorphic evidence	p. 46
Evidence from oceans	p. 47
Marine depositional environments	p. 48
Physical characteristics	p. 49
Biological data	p. 50
Geochemical data	p. 51
Evidence from ice-sheets	p. 52
Ice-sheet accumulation	p. 53
Stable isotope evidence	p. 54
Other ice core proxies	p. 54
Chronologies and correlation	p. 55
Radiocarbon dating and other radioactive isotopes	p. 56
Fission track, TL, OSL, ESR, and CN dating	p. 59
Incremental methods	p. 60
Age-equivalent markers	p. 61
Relative methods	p. 63
Summary	p. 64
Selected reading for Chapter 2	p. 65
Pleistocene Climatic Change and Environments of Mid- to High Latitudes	p. 66
Introduction	p. 67
The Pleistocene record	p. 67
Deep-sea sediments	p. 67
Loess sequences	p. 72
Ice cores	p. 72
Relation between land-based subdivisions and MIS	p. 75
The changing extent of glaciers and ice-caps	p. 76
North America	p. 77
The British Isles	p. 78
Europe and Asia	p. 78
The southern continents	p. 83
Permafrost and its extent in the Pleistocene	p. 85
Loess formation and distribution	p. 87
The nature of glacial/interglacial cycles	p. 92
The degree of climatic change in glacials	p. 92
Rapid climatic change events (RCCEs)	p. 95
The vegetational conditions of full glacials in Europe	p. 103
The glacial vegetation of North America	p. 105
The interstadials of the Last Glacial	p. 106
The nature of interglacials	p. 111
Variations in the British and European interglacials	p. 114
Faunal and floral fluctuations	p. 116
Selected reading for Chapter 3	p. 118
Pleistocene Environments of Lower Latitudes	p. 120
The antiquity of deserts	p. 121
Pleistocene intensification of aridity	p. 122
Dust in ocean cores	p. 123
Dust deposition as recorded in ice cores	p. 124
Ancient sandseas	p. 125
The fossil dunes of northern India	p. 128
The fossil dunes of Africa	p. 128
The fossil dunes of North and South America	p. 130
The fossil dunes of Australia	p. 130
Pluvial lakes	p. 131
The Nile	p. 139
Faunal and floral changes in the tropics	p. 141
Selected reading for Chapter 4	p. 146
Environmental Change in Post-glacial Times	p. 147
A stable Holocene?	p. 148
The transition from Late Glacial times	p. 149
The traditional Late Glacial subdivisions	p. 150
Dating events of the Late Glacial	p. 150
Late Glacial climates	p. 151
Late Glacial environments	p. 155
The onset of the Holocene	p. 156
Subdividing the Holocene	p. 157
Early Holocene climate	p. 157
Post-glacial spread of vegetation in Europe	p. 160
The 8200 cal yr BP event	p. 162
Mid- to late Holocene vegetation in Europe	p. 165
The North American Holocene sequence	p. 167
Russia, Asia, and Australia in the Holocene	p. 170
Humans and the Holocene sequence	p. 171
Post-glacial climatic optima and neoglaciations	p. 173
Neoglacials	p. 177
The Little Optimum, AD 750-1300	p. 177
The Little Ice Age	p. 181
Post-glacial times in the Sahara and adjacent regions	p. 184
Concluding points	p. 186
Selected reading for Chapter 5	p. 187
Environmental Change During the Period of Meteorological Records	p. 188
Introduction	p. 189
Warming in the early twentieth century	p. 189
A cooling episode at mid-century	p. 194
The warming episode of the late twentieth century	p. 195
Precipitation changes during the period of instrumental record	p. 197
The British Isles	p. 197
Low latitudes and desert margins	p. 200
The various scales of climatic fluctuation	p. 207
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation	p. 209
The Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations	p. 209
The North Atlantic Oscillation	p. 209
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation	p. 210
River discharge fluctuations	p. 210
Changing lake levels	p. 214
Changing dust-storm frequencies	p. 215
Glacier and sea-ice fluctuations in the twentieth century	p. 218
Conclusion	p. 222
Selected reading for Chapter 6	p. 222
Sea-Level Changes of the Quaternary	p. 223
The importance of sea-level changes	p. 224
Eustatic factors	p. 224
Glacio-eustasy	p. 225
Orogenic eustasy	p. 227
Geoidal eustasy	p. 228
Isostasy	p. 229
Miscellaneous causes of local changes in sea-level	p. 234
The nature of pre-Holocene sea-levels	p. 239
The post-glacial rise in sea-level or Flandrian transgression	p. 241
Post-glacial sea-level changes in northern Europe: the combined effects of eustasy and isostasy	p. 249
Conclusions	p. 252
Selected reading for Chapter 7	p. 252
Links between Environmental Change and Human Evolution and Society	p. 254
Earliest hominins	p. 255
Pleistocene environments and hominin speciation	p. 257
Africa	p. 257
Asia	p. 258
Europe	p. 259
Dispersal and modern human origins	p. 260
South-east Asia and Australia	p. 261
Colonization of the Americas	p. 263
Mesolithic advances	p. 265
Origins and spread of agriculture	p. 267
The rise of civilization	p. 271
Climate impacts on human society	p. 274
Post-glacial shifts in aridity	p. 274
The Little Optimum and the Little Ice Age	p. 277
Pre-industrial human impacts on the environment	p. 279
Selected reading for Chapter 8	p. 281
The Causes of Climatic Change	p. 282
Introduction	p. 283
Solar radiation hypotheses	p. 285
Cycles of variation and effects on climate	p. 285
Causes of solar irradiance change	p. 286
Relationships with the Earth's magnetic field	p. 287
Atmospheric transparency hypotheses	p. 287
Correlations between volcanism and climatic change	p. 288
Effects of dust	p. 289
Dust and atmospheric CO[subscript 2]	p. 290
Dust and clouds	p. 291
Earth geometry theories - the Croll-Milankovitch hypothesis	p. 291
Hypotheses involving changes in terrestrial geography	p. 296
The role of the greenhouse gases	p. 298
Feedback hypotheses involving land, oceans, atmosphere, and ice	p. 301
Albedo-based hypotheses	p. 301
Causes of abrupt climate changes	p. 301
Changes in North Atlantic Ocean circulation	p. 302
Conclusion	p. 305
Selected reading for Chapter 9	p. 306
Glossary	p. 307
References	p. 311
Index	p. 346
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