An improved chronology for the microscopic charcoal and pollen records from Anderson Pond, Tennessee, USA

AbstractAnderson Pond in eastern Tennessee is one of only a handful of sites in the interior southeastern US where researchers have developed pollen records that extend to the last full glacial period. Pollen data from the site have been widely used in regional syntheses and models of past vegetation and climate. Previous researchers either constructed age models that assumed continuous sedimentation from the Late Pleistocene to the present, and plotted pollen data by radiocarbon or calibrated ages (1976 core), or recognized the likelihood of hiatuses in the postglacial sediments, and plotted pollen data by depth (2007 cores). We present an improved chronology for the 1976 core based on prior delineation and dating of two hiatuses, and on new age modeling using AMS dates on macrofossils from cores collected in 2007. This new age model allows us to plot pollen and microscopic charcoal by age for the entirety of the record, and more accurately represents site history. Plotting pollen and charcoal assemblage...