Prof. Rodbell and student publish on Ballston Lake project

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.