Knowra Paleolimnology Paleolimnology Paleolimnology reconstructs past lake environments and ecological change, chiefly from physical, chemical, and biological evidence preserved in lake sediments.
Lake sediment core : A cylindrical sample of lake-bottom sediment collected to preserve its vertical sequence of deposits. Its ordered layers provide the principal archive paleolimnologists analyze.
Paleoclimatology : The study of climates before instrumental records, using geological, biological, and documentary evidence. Paleolimnology supplies long climate records from lake deposits.
Limnology : The study of inland waters, including lakes, rivers, wetlands, and their ecosystems. Paleolimnology extends limnological questions into the past.
Marine geology : The study of the seafloor and geological processes recorded in marine sediments and structures. Marine archives record ocean environments, while paleolimnology focuses on lakes and their catchments.
Varve : An annual sediment layer, commonly formed by seasonal changes in sediment supply or biological production. Countable varves can provide year-by-year chronologies for lake records.
Holocene : The geological epoch beginning about 11,700 years ago and continuing to the present. Many lake records trace climate and ecological change across this epoch.
Sedimentology : The study of sediments, their formation, transport, deposition, and transformation. Sedimentological processes explain how lake archives form and what can disturb them.
Speleothem : A mineral deposit formed in a cave, such as a stalactite or stalagmite. Cave deposits provide climate records through a different archive and set of proxy signals.
Radiocarbon dating : A method for dating once-living material by measuring its remaining carbon-14. It dates organic remains associated with sediment layers, with corrections and limits.
Little Ice Age : A period of regional cooling, especially in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, from roughly the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. Lake sediments preserve regional evidence of this historical climate interval.
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