This dissertation project focuses on three study areas in the middle Tanana Valley (mTV) to provide records of local terrestrial ecological contexts and environmental changes in lowland settings that dated to the Late Glacial and early Holocene (16,000 to 6,000 cal. years ago) in interior Alaska and Eastern Beringia. The archaeological record of the mTV provides a rich history of hunter-gatherer land use dating over 14,000 years old. This project is part of two larger projects focused on prehistoric human ecology and foraging behavior in Eastern Beringia: the Quartz Lake-Shaw Creek Flats Multidisciplinary and Upward Sun River Site Projects. The study areas are spread out across a 4,000 km2 area in the mTV and contain the presence of archaeological sites that have records of well-developed stratification of sediments and soils and preserved macrofossils. Two of the study areas are dune fields: the Little Delta Dunes (including the Upward Sun River Site) and Rosa-Keystone Dunes Fields; the third area is Quartz Lake, one of the largest lakes within the region. As a whole they provide important information to understand the evolution of regional landscapes, paleoecological systems, and paleoenvironmental conditions dating back to 25,000 years ago, over 10,000 years prior to the currently accepted earliest human occupation of the region. Late Glacial and early Holocene landscapes of the mTV were ones of moderate stability and landscape disturbance with high rates of loess and aeolian sand deposition, and the presence of early-to-middle successional vegetation communities (herbs and forbs, shrubs, and deciduous trees) that fostered the presence of diverse mammalian faunal communities that no longer coexist in the region. As the middle Holocene approached, landscapes became increasingly stable with the expansion of the boreal forest and aeolian deposition drastically decreased throughout the mTV. The disturbances that fostered the highly productive early-to-middle successional vegetative communities in the Late Glacial and early Holocene became progressively partitioned in the middle Holocene and primarily relegated to active floodplains. These local ecological contexts can be used to assess changes in Late Glacial and Holocene faunal diversity and in human ecology and foraging behavior in interior Alaska and Eastern Beringia.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-13T17:08:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VeronicaDA.pdf: 5709097 bytes, checksum: 4074580aee5ec2b7d354ddab1d446e43 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-19 / This work presents geophysical and geological results obtained in a dunefield located in the east coast of Rio Grande do Norte State, with the aim to recognize the aeolian body depositional geometries to a future geologic modeling of the aeolian petroliferous reservoirs. The research, which was done in blowouts region situated at Nisia Floresta Municipally, included the characterization of external geometries with GPS and internal geometry analysis by GPR. Data was integrated in GoCAD software, where it was possible the three-dimensional characterization and interpretation of the studied deposits. The interpretation of GPR profiling allowed identifying: First-order bounding surfaces that separated the aeolian deposits of the Barreiras Formation rocks; Second-order bounding surfaces, which limit dune generations and Third-order bounding surfaces, a reactivation surface. This classification was based and adapted by the Brookfield (1977) and Kocurek (1996) propose. Four radarfacies was recognized: Radarfacies 1, progradational reflectors correlated to foresets of the dunes, Radarfacies 2, plain parallels reflectors related to sand sheets, Radarfacies 3, plain parallels reflectors associated to reworking of the blowout dune crest and Radarfacies 4, mounded reflectors associated to vegetated mound of sand or objects buried in subsurface. The GPR and GPS methods was also employed to the monitoring of dunefields susceptible to human activities in Buzios Beach, where the constructions along the blowout region and the tourism are changing the natural evolution of the deposits. This fact possibly to cause negative impacts to the coastal zone. Data obtained in Dunas Park, a unit environmental conservation, was compared with information of the Buzios Beach. There is a major tendency of erosion in Buzios, specifically in blowout corridor and blowout dune / Este trabalho apresenta os resultados geol?gicos e geof?sicos obtidos em um campo de dunas situados no litoral oriental do Rio Grande do Norte e teve como objetivo definir as geometrias deposicionais dos corpos e?licos para posterior aplica??o na modelagem geol?gica de campos produtores de ?leo e g?s de origem e?lica. A pesquisa foi realizada em uma regi?o de blowouts, situada no munic?pio de N?sia Floresta - RN, onde foi poss?vel definir a superf?cie externa com o uso do GPS geod?sico e a estrutura??o interna utilizando o GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar). Estes dados foram integrados no software de modelagem geol?gica Gocad, permitindo a visualiza??o tridimensional e interpreta??o dos dep?sitos estudados. O levantamento de perfis geof?sicos permitiu a investiga??o da geometria interna dos dep?sitos, nos quais foi poss?vel reconhecer superf?cies limitantes de 1? ordem (superf?cie deposicional que separa os dep?sitos e?licos de rochas da Forma??o Barreiras), 2? ordem (superf?cie que separa diferentes pulsos de sedimenta??o e?lica) e 3? ordem (superf?cies de reativa??o). A classifica??o destas superf?cies acima descritas foi baseada e modificada das propostas de Brookfield (1977) e Kocurek (1996). Foram ainda definidas quatro radarf?cies, com base na forma e termina??o dos refletores: Radarf?cies 1, representada por refletores progradantes, os quais se relacionam aos foresets das acumula??es e?licas; Radarf?cies 2, que ? constitu?da por refletores suscept?veis ? a??o antr?pica na praia de B?zios, onde constru??es ao longo da regi?o de blowouts e a pr?tica intensiva de turismo est?o modificando o desenvolvimento natural destas acumula??es e?licas, podendo gerar impactos ambientais negativos para a zona costeira. Dados obtidos numa ?rea situada no Parque das Dunas (unidade de conserva??o ambiental) foram utilizados para compara??o com as informa??es adquiridas em B?zios. H? uma tend?ncia maior de eros?o na ?rea de B?zios, notadamente no corredor do blowout e na duna de blowout

La direction des vents nourriciers, obtenue à partir des gradients granulométriques et des morphologies dunaires, semble avoir changé au cours du temps. Celle-ci est orientée O-E au Pléniglaciaire moyen, puis NO-SE au Pléniglaciaire supérieur, tandis qu’au Dryas récent la direction est plutôt SSO-NNE. Dans ce travail, l’hypothèse d’un changement de la saison à laquelle les sables sont remobilisés est privilégiée. Ainsi, par comparaison avec la distribution azimutale actuelle des vents à l’échelle de l’année et en accord avec les reconstitutions pour le LGM, il est suggéré qu’au Pléniglaciaire supérieur la déflation éolienne était décalée vers la saison estivale, c’est-à-dire après la phase de dégel des sols et de fonte de la neige. Au contraire, les orientations établies pour le Pléniglaciaire moyen et le Dyras récent refléteraient une déflation active en période hivernale. / Le Pleniglacial, the north-west during the Upper Pleniglacial, and from south-southwest throughout the Younger Dryas. Here, we connect changing wind directions to seasonal variations in aeolian transport. Comparing annual azimuthal distribution of current wind regimes with wind regime models for LGM suggests that during the Upper Pleniglacial the dominant aeolian transport season shifted towards the summer, i.e. after seasonally frozen ground thawed and snow cover melted. Conversely, Middle Pleniglacial and Younger Dryas wind regimes reflect a general deflation during the winter.