PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #22: Paleoecology.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. Presentation from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM. Exhibition Hall
74
Synthesizing a mixed assemblage of packrat midden research on the Colorado Plateau.
Cannella, John1, Cole, Kenneth2, Arundel, Samantha1, 1 2
ABSTRACT- Packrat midden analysis has catalyzed the reconstruction of the last 40,000 years of paleoenvironments in the arid-southwest. Midden assemblages incorporate macrofossils of plants that grew within a packrat's range of a site and are typically identifiable to the species level. This extreme spatial and taxonomic resolution makes them ideal tools for studying regional changes in plant biogeography and climate, provided enough records can be compiled. Midden research on the southern Colorado Plateau has nearly tripled over the last 10 years, significantly increasing the number of radiocarbon-dated midden assemblages. Yet these more abundant records, analyzed in different ways by different investigators, are becoming ever-more difficult to summarize. To address the issue of disparate midden analyses and research, we have constructed a spatial database to catalog data from both published and reliable unpublished sources pertaining to the Colorado Plateau. The database currently contains data from over 45 sites on the Colorado Plateau, including nearly 300 midden samples and over 5000 plant macrofossil records. Coupled with a GIS, and regional spatial analyses of climate, this unique tool has unlimited potential for high-resolution regional reconstructions of environmental change through time. Research results demonstrate the utility of this GIS database in extending the record into the gaps between fossil sites by using site characteristics such as elevation and slope. The resulting past distribution maps can then be tested and refined through the development of additional fossil sites.
KEY WORDS: packrat, midden, database, Colorado Plateau