Bibliothèque de L'IMIST/CNRST

Includes bibliographical references.

The southern Laurentide Ice Sheet / David M. Mickelson and Patrick M. Colgan -- The Cordilleran Ice Sheet / Derek B. Booth ... [and others] -- Controls, history, outbursts, and impact of large late-Quaternary proglacial lakes in North America / James T. Teller -- Pleistocene glaciations of the Rocky Mountains / Kenneth L. Pierce -- Quaternary alpine glaciation in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, Sierra Nevada, and Hawaii / Darrell S. Kaufman, Stephen C. Porter and Alan R. Gillespie -- Coupling ice-sheet and climate models for simulation of former ice sheets / Shawn J. Marshall ... [and others] -- Permafrost process research in the United States since 1960 / Bernard Hallet ... [and others] -- Quaternary sea-level history of the United States / Daniel R. Muhs ... [and others] -- Western lakes / Larry Benson -- Isotopic records from ground-water and cave speleothem calcite in North America / Jay Quade -- Rivers and riverine landscapes / David R. Montgomery and Ellen E. Wohl -- Landscape evolution models / Frank J. Pazzaglia -- Eolian sediments / Alan J. Busacca ... [and others] -- Soils and the Quaternary climate system / Milan J. Pavich and Oliver A. Chadwick -- Earthquake recurrence inferred from paleoseismology / Brian F. Atwater ... [and others] -- Quaternary volcanism in the United States / William E. Scott -- Late-Quaternary vegetation history of the eastern United States / Eric C. Grimm and George L. Jacobson Jr. -- Quaternary vegetation and climate change in the western United States : developments, perspectives, and prospects / Robert S. Thompson ... [and others] -- Results and paleoclimate implications of 35 years of paleoecological research in Alaska / Patricia M. Anderson, Mary E. Edwards and Linda B. Brubaker.

Quaternary history from the U.S. tropics / Sara Hotchkiss -- Climatically forced vegetation dynamics in eastern North America during the late Quaternary Period / Thompson Webb III, Bryan Shuman and John W. Williams -- Holocene fire activity as a record of past environmental change / Cathy Whitlock and Patrick J. Bartlein -- Interannual to decadal climate and streamflow variability estimated from tree rings / David W. Stahle, Falko K. Fye and Matthew D. Therrell -- Quaternary Coleoptera of the United States and Canada / Allan C. Ashworth -- Vertebrate paleontology / S. David Webb ... [and others] -- Peopling of North America / David J. Meltzer -- Modeling paleoclimates / Patrick J. Bartlein and Steven W. Hostetler.

This book reviews advances in understanding of the past circa two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.

Description based on print version record.