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A bottomland flora that prevailed between ∼9900 and 6000 cal yr B.P. in a North Carolina stream valley may not reflect a regionally much wetter Atlantic climate, coeval with record drought in the Great Plains region and assumed dry Gulf coastal conditions. Such conditions were inferred for 6000 ± 1000 yr ago when the Bermuda High may have consistently occupied summer positions far to the NE. Arid episodes coeval with the Little River local wet interval are known from eolian sediments and pollen spectra in the Atlantic and the Gulf coastal plain. For multiple reasons, the regional extent, intensity, and duration of coastal aridity and alternating wet phases and the Bermuda High positions are not yet adequately constrained. The climate and edaphic causes for the steadily growing predominance of southern pines over hardwoods, achieved between ∼8900 and 4200 cal yr B.P. at different sites at different times are similarly still unresolved. New data from Shelby Lake, AL, reconfirms that no credible field or other proxy evidence exists for a previously postulated “catastrophic Gulf hurricane phase” in the late Holocene.

Luminescence dating of extensive dune fields and associated eolian sandsheets provided a chronology of recently recognized Pleistocene and early Holocene dry climate episodes in the currently humid warm temperate northern–northeastern Gulf of Mexico region. Scattered parabolic dunes and clusters of intersecting parabolic dunes, along with elongated shore-transverse and shore-parallel dunes, developed. These landforms occur in a 390-km-long and 2- to 3-km-wide, semicontinuous belt in southeast Alabama and northwestern Florida. Dune elevations reach ± 22 m. Sangamon coastal barrier sectors were the primary source of the eolian sand. Deflation was coeval with early Wisconsin to mid-Holocene marine low sea-levels and associated distant shorelines. Early Holocene dune dates were synchronous, with indications of a hypsithermal dry interval in southeast Louisiana, the Yucatan, and the south Atlantic seaboard. Overlapping with dry episodes in Yucatan and the High Plains, Texas dunes and Louisiana and Texas prairie mounds, especially in the southwest Texas coast still dominated by dry climate, suggests intervals of early to late Holocene drought. The dates provide the basis for identifying and correlating Wisconsin, early, and late Holocene climate phases between currently semiarid and humid, coastal and interior areas. They contribute to future studies, including interregional paleoclimate modeling. Although Pleistocene coastal eolian deposition coincided with glaciation in the northern interior and with cooler temperatures of a reduced Gulf of Mexico, Holocene aridity phases may have been related to major variations in the position of high-pressure cells, storm tracks, and branches of the jet stream, and even to prolonged La Niña conditions.

Thirty-five sand hills that form six scattered groups rise abruptly from the flat late Pleistocene coastal plain in southeastern Louisiana. New studies confirm their eolian origin. For the first time, several late Wisconsin to early Holocene episodes of arid climate conditions have been recognized and dated in this currently humid warm-temperate subtropical region. Periods of dune formation and reactivation (28,800 to 7900 yr B.P.) were determined by the thermoluminescence method. The onset of the current climate in this Gulf coastal region postdates early Holocene time. The textural and structural homogeneity of the ridge lithosomes, good sorting of their sand fraction, and the dominantly orange hues of the dune sediments contrast with the underlying yellowish–brown to light-brown sandy silts and the well-stratified, occasionally gravelly sands of the underlying alluvial Prairie Formation. Sharply defined, unconformable ridge bases; symmetrical, oval, occasionally parabolic mound shapes; and steep slopes confirm the dune origins. The dominant orientations of ridges and ridge chains clearly reflect paleowind directions. Age comparison with dunes of the lower Mississippi Valley, the northeastern–eastern Gulf of Mexico coast, and south Atlantic coastal areas confirms the existence of at least seasonally dry climate conditions from early Wisconsin to middle Holocene times. The onset of the modern humid-subtropical climate phase in this region thus dates back only to the middle Holocene.

Among numerous stream-valley terrace deposits of the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains that occupy chronologically and spatially intermediate positions between the youngest coastwise (coast-parallel) Pleistocene surface and the present, active floodplain, those of the Tunica Hills seem to provide by far the best opportunity for radiometric dating. Earlier views on the age of the Little Bayou Sara creek alluvium, represented by a single, 8 to 10-m-thick unit, ranged between the last interglaciation and middle Holocene. Reexamination of these deposits in the Little Bayou Sara and adjacent valleys clearly suggests their Late Pleistocene (apparently Farmdalian Interstade) age. The majority of the 14 available dates from the Little Bayou Sara and Tunica Bayou valleys proved to be too young, due to postdepositinal contamination. Dates ranging between 33,720 and 25,965 yr B.P. came from samples thought to be uncontaminated. Plant and faunal elements with boreal affinities in the unique fossil assemblage appear to be relicts of a preceding, full-glacial period, as regarded by Brown (1938). The absence of colder climate taxa from the Wilcox Bluff flora on Bayou Sara is insufficient evidence for a suggested Sangamon Interglacial age of the flora, and the terrace stratigraphy holds no proof for that view either. Only a single, loess-mantled, constructional, Quaternary, valley-terrace surface is present in the area. A narrow, low, actively developing floodplain terrace along Little Bayou Sara, cut into the Pleistocene alluvial unit, is primarily erosional in origin and has no bearing on the age of that unit. The age of the Tunica Hills terrace unit may provide comparison for dating intermediate valley-terrace deposits in favorable coastal settings elsewhere.