Lake sediments have been identified as an alternative to contemporary stream monitoring to establish catchment sediment yields and infer erosion rates. This is due primarily to the longer time period over which the former is based, which makes established yields and rates more representative of means or trends in sedimentation. Studies using lake sediments to establish sediment yields have generally assumed that all the sediment contained within a lake is derived from erosion of the catchment under investigation. This study undermines this assumption by constructing a comprehensive lake sediment budget to asses the relative contributions from various sources. Late Holocene (the last 2350 years) rates of sediment yield and erosion are established for 3 small (<1 km²) catchments that straddle timberline (1620 - 1850 m above sea level) in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Due to the temporal and spatial variability of sedimentation in lakes, sediment cores for each lake were taken using a multiple-core approach. Chronology was established by the presence of a dated tephra layer. Once the cores were extracted, corrections were made for sediment derived from aquatic productivity (organic matter and biogenic silica), regional aeolian dust input, the erosion of lake banks and for outflow losses. These sources of sediment could account for between 55 and 99% of the sediment contained within the 3 lakes. Lake trap efficiency ranges from low to >70%. Once corrected, estimates of sediment yield range from 4 and 244 kg km⁻²yr⁻¹. The rate of regional aeolian deposition indicates that, in certain areas, these catchments are undergoing net deposition and not net erosion. The implications for lake sediment-based sediment yields and erosion rates are examined. When placed in a regional context sediment yields are more than 1 order of magnitude lower than larger scale basins due to changes in sediment storage. The spatial and temporal representativeness of the data are also evaluated. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

The research reported here constitutes an investigation into features of internal ordering of stories narrated in natural conversation. Following the work of Sacks, Schegloff and other sociological analysts of conversational structure, this report focuses on methodical ways in which utterances are interpretable by reference to, e.g., sequential placement. An existing literature on the social organization of the telling of jokes and stories suggests that slots designed for utterance-types can be analytically identified. The present study aims to show that there is an identifiable position, story closing, which provides for orderly expectations concerning the items that may be found in such a location. The report argues that there are two independently describeable organizations which structure naturally occuring stories: the course-of-action framework and an organization oriented to giving a grounding identity to the story's teller. The former is concerned with the series of connected, temporally unfolding events, marked by beginning and end, which the story proposes to represent by a sequence of utterances. In that story-tellers exhibit selectivity and coherence, it is evident that such stories are formulated from the point of view of the character that teller allocates to self within the narration. The latter organization provides for the story's recipients a "members adequate sociological explanation" of the teller's character's point of view. It does so by assigning to teller's character a social identity which is the locus of commonly known, socially organized motives and attitudes. The story closing is a sequential position that closes off the course-of-action from the teller's character's point of view. The expectation that such an item will fill that slot can be used by the story's recipients to decide among different possible interpretations of a story's last utterance. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

The American Cordillera, a major mountain belt spanning>15000 km along the western margins of North and South America, formed as a result of crustal shortening and magmatism during ocean-continent convergence. These mountains were the loci of addition and redistribution of continental crust. The contributions presented here address the style, timing, and kinematics of underthrusting of continental crust in the retroarc of the central Andes as well as the rapid burial and metamorphism of forearc rocks that contributed to magmatism in the Canadian Cordillera. This work involved geological mapping and structural analysis coupled with geo- and thermochronological analysis. In the central Andes, results confirm a southward transition in structural style and magnitude of Cenozoic shortening that coincides with the disappearance of a thick Paleozoic basin that accommodated major Cenozoic shortening. U-Pb and (U-Th)/He results also demonstrate that thrust belt kinematics in northwestern Argentina were greatly influenced by pre-orogenic heterogeneities in Cretaceous rift architecture. Results from western Canada reveal that rapid underthrusting of forearc rocks occurred during Late Cretaceous time, likely associated with an episode of shallow subduction. This event did not result in basement-involved foreland uplifts thought to be a signature of shallow subduction in the western United States and central Argentina. Taken together, this work has the major implication that variations in the pre-orogenic upper crustal architecture strongly influence the behavior of the continental lithosphere during orogenesis, a result that challenges geodynamic models that largely neglect upper plate heterogeneities.

Accelerated glacial recession and downwasting of glaciers in the Bowser River Watershed of the northern British Columbia Coast Mountains have exposed subfossil wood remains and laterally contiguous wood mat layers. To develop an understanding of Holocene glacial fluctuations in this region, field investigations were conducted in 2005, 2006 and 2013 at Frank Mackie, Charlie, Salmon and Canoe glaciers. These wood remains represent periods of Holocene glacier advance, when glaciers expanded and overwhelmed downvalley forests. Dendroglaciology and radiocarbon analyses revealed five intervals of glacial expansion: (1) a mid-Holocene advance at 5.7-5.1 ka cal. yr BP; (2) an early Tiedemann advance at 3.6-3.4 ka cal. yr BP; (3) a late Tiedemann advance at 2.7-2.4 ka cal. yr BP; (4) a First Millennium AD Advance at 1.8-1.6 ka cal. yr BP; and, (5) three advances during the Little Ice Age at 0.9-0.7, 0.5 and 0.2-0.1 ka cal. yr BP. These results provide new evidence for mid-Holocene glacier activity in northern British Columbia, as well as supporting previous research that Holocene glacier advances were episodic and regionally synchronous. / Graduate / 0368

Holocene climate variability in the British Columbia Coast Mountains has resulted in repeated intervals of glacier expansion and retreat. Since reaching their late Holocene maximum positions in the late 20th century, glaciers in the region have experienced significant volumetric loss. The subsequent downwasting and frontal retreat has revealed forests buried by glacier advances throughout the Holocene, enabling description of significant intervals of ice expansion using dendroglaciology. This thesis characterizes dendroglaciological evidence as it relates to climate at two scales: (1) at Franklin Glacier in the Mt. Waddington area, and; (2) throughout the Coast Mountains. Dendroglaciological evidence from glacier forefields and lateral moraines in the Coast Mountains provides evidence for at least 11 intervals of glacier activity during the Holocene. The earliest record glacier activity is documented in the Pacific Ranges from 8.5 to 7.8 ka, after which glaciers in this region retreated during the early Holocene warm and dry interval. Following this a glacial advance from 6.7 to 5.6 ka was followed by a subsequent expansion episode from 5.1 to 4.6 ka in response to attendant cool and moist conditions in the Pacific Ranges. After 4.6 ka, glaciers in the Pacific and Boundary ranges advanced at 4.4 to 4.0 and 3.8 to 3.4 ka during intervals characterized wet conditions resulting from an intense, eastwardly positioned Aleutian Low pressure centre. Following 3.4 ka most glaciers retreated before expanded between 3.2 and 2.8 ka, retreated, and then advanced from 2.6 to 2.4 ka. Glacier advances from 1.8 to 1.1 ka occurred in response to a regional cooling event, and proceeded Little Ice Age advances from 0.6 to 0.4 ka. Franklin Glacier is an 18-km long valley glacier that originates below the west face of Mt. Waddington. Radiocarbon-dated wood samples from the proximal faces of lateral moraines flanking the glacier show that it expanded at least nine times since 13 ka. A probable Younger Dryas advance of Franklin Glacier at 12.8 ka followed the late glacial retreat and downwasting of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet from ca. 16.0 to 12.9 ka. During the succeeding early Holocene warm period, Franklin Glacier appears to have retreated significantly, leaving no record of glacial expansion until the mid-Holocene when it repeatedly advanced at 6.3, 5.4, and 4.6 ka in response to cool summer temperatures and generally moist conditions. Downwasting of the glacier surface after 4.6 ka was followed by intervals of expansion at 4.1, 3.1, and 2.4 ka contemporaneous with a period of increased precipitation. Following ice expansion at 2.4 ka into trees over 224 years in age, there is no record of the glacier activity until 1.5 ka when Franklin Glacier thickened and advanced into young subalpine fir trees, reflecting attendant cool and wet environmental conditions. During the Little Ice Age, advances at 0.8 and 0.6 ka preceded a mid-19th to early-20th century advance that saw Franklin Glacier attain its maximum Holocene extent in response to an extended interval of cold temperatures. The dendroglaciological record at Franklin Glacier is among the most comprehensive recovered from the British Columbia Coast Mountains and showcases the complexity of latest Pleistocene and Holocene glacier behaviour in the region. / Graduate / 0368 / bjmood@uvic.ca

Scimitar Glacier originates below the northeast face of Mt. Waddington in the southern British Columbia Coast Mountains and flows 18 km down valley to calve into a proglacial lake. The purpose of this research was to describe the late Holocene glacier history of Scimitar Glacier using stratigraphic analysis in conjunction with dendroglaciologic and radiocarbon dating techniques. Downwasting of the glacier surface has exposed stacked till units separated by wood-bearing horizons in the proximal slopes of lateral moraines flanking the glacier at several locations. Historical moraine collapse and erosional breaching has also revealed the remains of standing trees buried in sediments from a lake originally ponded against the distal moraine slope. Radiocarbon dating of detrital wood remains revealed that Scimitar Glacier expanded down-valley at least three times in the late Holocene. The earliest period of expansion occurred 3167-2737 cal yr BP in association with the regional Tiedemann Advance. Following this the glacier receded and downwasted prior to advancing to reconstruct the lateral moraine in 1568-1412 cal yr BP during the First Millennial Advance. The most recent phase of moraine construction was initiated during late Little Ice Age glacial expansion before 1742 AD and extended until at least 1851 AD, after which Scimitar Glacier began to recede and downwaste. Field investigations at Scimitar Glacier allowed for the construction of a late Holocene history of glacier expansion and lateral moraine construction that spans the last 3000 years. This record is comparable to that recorded at other glaciers in this region, and confirms the long-term relationship between regional climate trends and glacier behaviour in this setting. / Graduate

In Pacific North America, a substantial amount of the streamflow available during the dry summer months originates from melting mountain snowpacks. Since the start of the twenty-first century, these mountain snowpacks have been declining due to the impacts of global climate change and could have severe implications for future water availability in many regions. To develop robust predictive models of future water availability derived from mountainous snowpacks, the longest possible data record is required. However, instrumental data for snow measurements, when available, are limited to a length of only five or six decades in most regions of Pacific North America. In this study, tree-rings from snow-depth sensitive tree species (mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana (Bong.) Carrière) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa (Hook.) Nutt.)) were used as a proxy to develop a 258-year record of precipitation as snow (PAS) for the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Four snow models were evaluated based on a suite of dendroclimatological model diagnostics. From these, one PAS reconstruction was carried out. The reconstruction was unable to properly validate using the leave-one-out cross validation method. This result is attributed to the combination of a short calibration period, a potentially weak climate signal, and the absence of signal enhancement. Despite this outcome the research resulted in number of inferences and recommendations useful for future research. / Graduate

The Atnarko complex located in west-central British Columbia comprises pre-Early Jurassic metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks, termed the Atnarko assemblage, which is structurally interleaved with Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous orthogneiss. The Atnarko assemblage correlates with continental margin assemblages found within the Coast plutonic complex. Tectonic interaction between the Insular and Intermontane superterranes resulted in several phases of deformation including; 1) poorly preserved Jurassic deformation, 2) Early to mid-Cretaceous, southwest to west directed, compression, 3) mid-Cretaceous, north to northeast directed, compression, 4) mid- to Late Cretaceous dextral and sinistral ductile/brittle shearing, and 5) post latest Cretaceous brittle faulting. Peak metamorphism coincides with generation of migmatite in the Early Cretaceous (~117-115 Ma) and is contemporaneous with penetrative ductile fabrics. The Atnarko complex had cooled below 350°C by the Late. Comparison of the Atnarko complex to equivalent portions of the orogen along strike, indicates a post mid-Cretaceous change in structural style. To the northwest the orogen records continued southwest-directed compression which dominates the deformation style; while to the southeast large dextral strike-slip faults dominate. Relative plate motions between ca. 70-60 Ma indicate that dextral transpression occurred between the Kula and North American plates. Strain during this transpressive deformation was partitioned into compressive and translational regions. The Atnarko complex area is situated at the transition between translation and compression. The conditions of the lower and middle crust within the orogen were established by how strain was partitioned across the orogen. The distributed strain also shaped how the orogen responded to Tertiary extension. Continued compression to the northwest of the Atnarko complex led to increased crustal thickness and partial melting of lower and middle crust in the Tertiary. Conversely, the cessation of compression in the southeast lead to a more stable (i.e. cooler) crustal lithosphere. A change in relative plate motions in the early Tertiary triggered full-scale, orogen-perpendicular, collapse in the northwest facilitated by decoupling between the middle and lower crusts along thermally weakened layers. Localized orogen-parallel extension occurred in the southeast which was kinematically linked to large dextral strike-slip faults where the upper crust remained coupled to the middle and lower crust.

The intent of the research described in this thesis was to reconstruct and document Holocene glacier activity in the central British Columbia Coast Mountains. Despite ongoing efforts to describe glacier fluctuations in the southern and northern Coast Mountains, only limited attention has been directed to revealing the Holocene histories of glaciers in the central Coast Mountain region. The goals of this research were twofold: firstly, to describe mid-Holocene glacier advances at five remote glacier sites in the central Coast Mountains, and secondly, to detail Little Ice Age (LIA) glacier fluctuations at four glacier sites in the central Coast Mountains. The mid-Holocene behaviour of Canoe, Fyles, Jacobsen, Tchaikazan and Icemaker glaciers was investigated using dendroglaciological techniques and stratigraphic analysis. Subfossil wood evidence suggests these glaciers were expanding into standing forests prior to 6.63, 4.90 and 4.20 ka. Stratigraphically constrained woody detritus at Fyles Glacier records the progradational history of a Gilbert-type delta forming in response to glacial expansion between 7.02-5.47 ka. Glacial expansion occurring between 7.50-4.00 ka has regional correlatives, suggesting coherent broad-scale climate forcing mechanisms influenced glacial mass balance at this time. Insight into the LIA behaviour of central Coast Mountain glaciers was provided by conducting lichenometric surveys of Rhizocarpon spp. across LIA moraines at Pattullo, Fyles, Deer Lake and Jacobsen glaciers. The presence of a second, lesser known, lichen species at some sites necessitated the construction of a Xanthoria elegans growth curve. An assessment of lichenometric measurements from the southern and central Coast Mountains provided the opportunity to build a X. elegans growth curve constrained by 18 control points. Lichenometric surveys revealed dominant moraine building episodes at 890-1020, 1280-1320, 1490-1530, 1680-1720, 1780 and 1820-1870 AD, highlighting the complex nature of glacier fluctuations during the LIA. A regional subalpine fir tree-ring chronology (1610-2010 AD) was developed from four stands located in the central Coast Mountains for dendroclimatological investigations. Correlation analyses show that the radial growth of trees corresponded to variations in the mean June/July air temperature and May 1st snowpack. This relationship was used to reconstruct these climate parameters for the duration of the tree-ring record. Intervals of cooler summer air temperatures and above average snowpack were found to broadly correspond with dominant periods of LIA moraine building from 1610-1930 AD. This reconstruction of mid-Holocene and LIA glacial history offered insights consistent with the emerging record of glacial activity described for the southern Coast Mountain glaciers. It also provides the first evidence for mid-Holocene glacial expansion in the central and northern Coast Mountains. The application of lichenometry in the central Coast Mountains documents the regional LIA behaviour of glaciers and the construction of a Xanthoria elegans growth curve for the Coast Mountains provides a framework for future geobotanical dating using this species. / Graduate

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is an endangered keystone tree species growing at the highest elevations in the mountain ranges of western North America. Across its range, whitebark pine is faced with a number of threats including fire suppression, mountain pine beetle, white pine blister rust, and climate change. Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat facing the species, yet it is the least understood. Most studies rely on model predictions and only look at the impacts on whitebark pine itself, not taking into consideration the other bird, mammal, and plant communities that are associated with it. In order to assess the potential effects of climate change on whitebark pine communities in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia, this thesis examined the vegetation associations and climate controls currently shaping the communities. My results showed that whitebark pine is growing in the open away from other subalpine tree species. This suggests that whitebark pine is not facilitating other subalpine tree species, contrary to what has been shown in the Rocky Mountains. Evidence of a distinct suite of understory vegetation associated with whitebark pine is weak and inconclusive. Differences in understory vegetation appear to be mainly due to site differences in climate, soils, and topography. Age distributions constructed from tree cores revealed that whitebark pine decline at lower elevation sites may be due to successional advancement to subalpine fir, and subalpine fir is currently encroaching into higher elevation sites. A dendrochronological assessment revealed that winter conditions, including snowpack, temperature, and the Aleutian Low Pressure Index (ALPI) were the most limiting to whitebark pine growth at high-elevation sites, but biotic factors including disease and competition appear to be more important than climate in determining annual ring growth at lower elevation sites. Bootstrapped correlations between annual ring widths and snowpack records showed that tree responses to fluctuating snowpack have changed over time. For most of the 20th century, low snowpack periods were associated with greater annual growth. Since around 1970, when the snowpack levels dropped below anything previously recorded for the area, annual tree growth has been reduced. It appears that these high elevation tree species require a balance between too much snow (shorter growing season) and too little snow (reduced protection from harsh winter conditions). Climate change models for the area predict drastically reduced snowpack in the coming decades. If snowpack continues to drop, as it has since 1970, it will likely lead to severe impacts on whitebark pine growth in the southern Coast Mountains. / Graduate / 0329 / carlsonkim@hotmail.com