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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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