Posted on Sep 26, 2003

Donald Rodbell, associate professor of geology, has published
a paper — with co-authors Jaime Toney ('00) Garrand and Norton Miller (NYS
Biological Survey) — in the September issue of Quaternary Research: “Sedimentologic
and palynologic records of the last deglaciation and Holocene from Ballston Lake,
New York.” The research for this paper was part of Toney's senior
thesis on the pollen record of climate change preserved in Ballston
Lake. This was part of the Ballston
Lake Initiative (http://zircon.union.edu/Ballston/introduction), and the
9-meter long core that Toney worked on was taken by students in Rodbell's “Lakes
and Environmental Change” class. The record turns out to be the highest
resolution pollen record yet from eastern
New York State
and reveals the sudden and dramatic change in climate that occurred at the end
of the last Ice Age (about 11,000 years ago) as well as several small climatic
changes that occurred over the past 10,000 years.