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A late Holocene carbonate spring mound and associated wetland deposits at Cienega Amarilla, New Mexico, contain a 4000-yr record of geomorphic, paleoenvironmental, and hydroclimatic change on the southern Colorado Plateau. Forty-four 14C dates support a century-scale chronostratigraphic framework. Pollen, plant macrofossil, mollusk, ostracode, and soil analyses indicate rapid spring mound growth and wetland expansion beginning ~2300 cal yr BP, followed by a pronounced decline in groundwater discharge (GWD) between ~1500 and 1000 cal yr BP. The isotopic composition of Cienega Amarilla springwater suggests GWD is driven primarily by winter precipitation. Historical climate data indicate that El Niño and warm Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) conditions foster wetter-than-average winters in the Cienega Amarilla area, whereas dry winters are associated with La Niña conditions regardless of PDO phase. The ~2300–1500 cal yr BP Cienega Amarilla pluvial appears to represent an interval of peak, late Holocene cool-season precipitation that implies unusually strong or persistent El Niño–like and warm PDO–like conditions in the Pacific. Other southwestern paleoenvironmental records corroborate atypically wet conditions during this interval, and pluvial conditions related to increased winter precipitation likely fostered significant prehistoric cultural changes throughout the region, including increased sedentism, population, and dependence on agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A thick alluvial sequence in central New Mexico contains the Scholle wet meadow deposit that traces upstream to a paleospring. The wet meadow sediments contain an abundant fauna of twenty-one species of freshwater and terrestrial mollusks and ten species of ostracodes. The mollusks and ostracodes are indicative of a local high alluvial water table with spring-supported perennial flow but without standing water. Pollen analysis documents shrub grassland vegetation with sedges, willow, and alder in a riparian community. Stable carbon isotopes from the wet meadow sediments have δ13C values ranging from −22.8 to −23.3‰, indicating that 80% of the organic carbon in the sediment is derived from C3 species. The wet meadow deposit is AMS dated 10,400 to 9700 14CyrBP, corresponding to 12,300 to 11,100calyrBP and overlapping in time with the Younger Dryas event (YD). The wet meadow became active about 500yr after the beginning of the YD and persisted 400yr after the YD ended. The Scholle wet meadow is the only record of perennial flow and high water table conditions in the Abo Arroyo drainage basin during the past 13ka. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent archaeological investigations at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon reveal that residents constructed a large diversion channel during the eleventh century A.D. as dramatic growth resulted in the expansion of the building onto the main valley floor. Sediments in the diversion channel reflect repeated episodes of flooding, rather than slow moving water typically found in irrigation canals, and archaeobotanical data indicate deposition during late summer or early fall. Although an agricultural function is possible, the channel may have been built primarily to divertfloodwaters away from Pueblo Bonito while providing a nearby water source for construction and domestic use. The diversion channel was destroyed by the entrenchment of the "Bonito paleo-channel" in the late A.D. 1000s, and then buried by a combination of cultural debris and valley flooding. Although the canyon stream system changed throughout the occupation of Pueblo Bonito, there is no evidence that the formation of a deep natural channel in the floodplain had any negative effect on the growth of the great house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the early irrigation system for maize agriculture on the Colorado Plateau near Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. Radiocarbon dates of the irrigation system; Irrigation canals at K'yana Chabina; Chronology of irrigation.

The potential for increased drought frequency and severity linked to anthropogenic climate change in the semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States (US) is a serious concern. Multi-year droughts during the instrumental period and decadal-length droughts of the past two millennia were shorter and climatically different from the future permanent, 'dust-bowl-like' megadrought conditions, lasting decades to a century, that are predicted as a consequence of warming. So far, it has been unclear whether or not such megadroughts occurred in the southwestern US, and, if so, with what regularity and intensity. Here we show that periods of aridity lasting centuries to millennia occurred in the southwestern US during mid-Pleistocene interglacials. Using molecular palaeotemperature proxies to reconstruct the mean annual temperature (MAT) in mid-Pleistocene lacustrine sediment from the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, we found that the driest conditions occurred during the warmest phases of interglacials, when the MAT was comparable to or higher than the modern MAT. A collapse of drought-tolerant C(4) plant communities during these warm, dry intervals indicates a significant reduction in summer precipitation, possibly in response to a poleward migration of the subtropical dry zone. Three MAT cycles ∼2 °C in amplitude occurred within Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 and seem to correspond to the muted precessional cycles within this interglacial. In comparison with MIS 11, MIS 13 experienced higher precessional-cycle amplitudes, larger variations in MAT (4-6 °C) and a longer period of extended warmth, suggesting that local insolation variations were important to interglacial climatic variability in the southwestern US. Comparison of the early MIS 11 climate record with the Holocene record shows many similarities and implies that, in the absence of anthropogenic forcing, the region should be entering a cooler and wetter phase.