Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay pollen data

Metadata:

• Identification_Information
• Data_Quality_Information
• Spatial_Data_Organization_Information
• Spatial_Reference_Information
• Entity_and_Attribute_Information
• Distribution_Information
• Metadata_Reference_Information

Identification_Information:

Citation:

Citation_Information:

Originator: Debra Willard

Publication_Date: 2006

Title: Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay pollen data

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: spreadsheet

Online_Linkage: <http://sofia.usgs.gov/exchange/willard/willardpollen.html>

Description:

Abstract:

This project developed, refined, and utilized a variety of proxies to provide estimates of seasonal, interannual, and decadal salinity history of Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay based on strategically placed sediment cores that aided in the validation and sensitivity testing of hydrologic models and decision making in water management. The datasets contain the pollen information at various depths in the cores.

Purpose:

Terrestrial ecosystems of south Florida have undergone numerous human disturbances, ranging from alteration of hydroperiod, fire history, and drainage patterns from the introduction of the canal system to expansion of agricultural activity to the introduction of exotic species, Over historical time, dramatic changes in the ecosystem have been documented and these changes have been attributed to various human activities. However, the natural variability of the ecosystem was unknown and needed to be determined to assess the true impact of human activity on the modern ecosystem. The project was designed to document historical changes in the terrestrial ecosystem quantitatively, to date any changes and determine whether they resulted form documented human activities, and to establish the baseline level of variability on the south Florida ecosystem to estimate whether the observed changes are greater than would occur naturally.

Time_Period_of_Content:

Time_Period_Information:

Range_of_Dates/Times:

Beginning_Date: 19940226

Ending_Date: 19961101

Currentness_Reference: ground condition

Status:

Progress: Complete

Maintenance_and_Update_Frequency: None planned

Spatial_Domain:

Bounding_Coordinates:

West_Bounding_Coordinate: -80.62

East_Bounding_Coordinate: -80

North_Bounding_Coordinate: 25.26

South_Bounding_Coordinate: 25

Keywords:

Theme:

Theme_Keyword_Thesaurus: none

Theme_Keyword: biology

Theme_Keyword: ecology

Theme_Keyword: pollen

Theme_Keyword: geology

Theme:

Theme_Keyword_Thesaurus: ISO 19115 Topic Category

Theme_Keyword: biota

Theme_Keyword: environment

Theme_Keyword: geoscientificInformation

Place:

Place_Keyword_Thesaurus:

Department of Commerce, 1995, Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4, Washington, DC, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Place_Keyword: United States

Place_Keyword: US

Place:

Place_Keyword_Thesaurus:

U.S. Department of Commerce, 1987, Codes for the identification of the States, the District of Columbia and the outlying areas of the United States, and associated areas (Federal Information Processing Standard 5-2): Washington, DC, NIST

Place_Keyword: Florida

Place_Keyword: FL

Place:

Place_Keyword_Thesaurus:

Department of Commerce, 1990, Counties and Equivalent Entities of the United States, Its Possessions, and Associated Areas, FIPS 6-3, Washington, DC, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Place_Keyword: Miami-Dade County

Place_Keyword: Monroe County

Place:

Place_Keyword_Thesaurus: USGS Geographic Names Information System

Place_Keyword: Florida Bay

Place_Keyword: Biscayne Bay

Place:

Place_Keyword_Thesaurus: none

Place_Keyword: Central Everglades

Place_Keyword: South East Coast

Access_Constraints: none

Use_Constraints: none

Point_of_Contact:

Contact_Information:

Contact_Person_Primary:

Contact_Person: Debra Willard

Contact_Organization: U.S. Geological Survey

Contact_Position: Project Chief

Contact_Address:

Address_Type: mailing address

Address: 926A National Center

City: Reston

State_or_Province: VA

Postal_Code: 20192

Country: USA

Contact_Voice_Telephone: 703 648-5320

Contact_Facsimile_Telephone: 703 648-6953

Contact_Electronic_Mail_Address: dwillard@usgs.gov

Native_Data_Set_Environment: MS Excel

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator:

Willard, Debra A.

Weimer, Lisa M.

Publication_Date: 1997

Title: Palynological Census Data from Surface Samples in South Florida

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: USGS Open-File Report

Issue_Identification: 97-0867

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Reston, VA

Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey

Online_Linkage: <http://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/of/ofr97867.html>

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator:

Willard, Debra A.

Bernhardt, Christopher E.; Weimer, Lisa (deceased); Gamez, Desire; Cooper, Sherri R.; Jensen, Jennifer

Publication_Date: 2004

Title: Atlas of Pollen and Spores of the Florida Everglades

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Palynology

Issue_Identification: 28

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Arlington, TX

Publisher: American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists

Other_Citation_Details:

Posted with permission from Palynology and the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists

Online_Linkage: <http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/papers/pollen_atlas/>

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator:

Willard, Debra A.

Weimer, Lisa M.; Riegel, W. L.

Publication_Date: 2001

Title:

Pollen assemblages as paleoenvironmrntal proxies in the Florida Everglades

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology

Issue_Identification: v. 113 n. 4

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Publisher: Elsevier Science B.V.

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator:

Stuvier, M.

Reimer, P. J.; Bard, E.; Beck, J. W.; Burr, G. S.; Hughen, K. A.; Kromer, B.; McCormac, G.; van der Plicht, J.; Spurk, M.

Publication_Date: 1998

Title: INTCAL98 radiocarbon age calibration, 24,000-0 cal BP

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Radiocarbon

Issue_Identification: v. 40, n. 3

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Tucson, AZ

Publisher: University of Arizona

Online_Linkage:

<http://digitalcommons.library.arizona.edu/index.php/objectviewer?o=http://radiocarbon.library.arizona.edu/Volume40/Number3/azu_radiocarbon_v40_n3_1041_1083_v.pdf>

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator: Grimm, E. C.

Publication_Date: 1992

Title:

CONISS: a Fortran 77 program for stratigraphically constrained cluster analysis by the mothod of incremental sum of squares

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: paper

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Computers & Geosciences

Issue_Identification: v. 13, issue 1

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Publisher: Elsevier Science, Ltd.

Other_Citation_Details:

The abstract may be viewed online at the Science Direct website. The full article is available for purchase from the Science Direct website.

Online_Linkage: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00983004>

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator: Traverse, A.

Publication_Date: 1988

Title: Paleopalynology

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: book

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Boston, MA

Publisher: Unwin Hyman

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator: Stockmarr, J.

Publication_Date: 1971

Title: Tablets with spores used in absolute pollen analysis

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Pollen et Spores

Issue_Identification: v. 13

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Paris, France

Publisher: Museum national d'histoire naturelle

Cross_Reference:

Citation_Information:

Originator:

Overpeck, J. T.

Webb, III, T.; Prentice, I. C.

Publication_Date: 1985

Title:

Quantative interpretation of fossil pollen spectra: Dissimilarity coefficients and the method of modern analogs

Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: report

Series_Information:

Series_Name: Quaternary Research

Issue_Identification: v 23, issue 1

Publication_Information:

Publication_Place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Publisher: Elsevier Science, Ltd.

Other_Citation_Details:

The abstract may be viewed online at the Science Direct website. The full article is available for purchase from the Science Direct website.

Online_Linkage: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00335894>

Data_Quality_Information:

Logical_Consistency_Report: not available

Completeness_Report: not available

Lineage:

Process_Step:

Process_Description:

Coring Procedure Long cores (>1 m in length), were taken in >30 cm of water through the "moon pool" of a motorized 25 ft pontoon barge either grounded on the bank or anchored with 4 anchors. The location was established by GPS. A portable 12 ft high tripod was placed over the moon pool to hold the coring piston and for extraction of the core. Cores were taken with 10.8 cm-diameter, clear, FDA food grade polycarbonate tubing. A PVC piston with two O-ring seals was used. The piston was pushed into the bottom of the core tube to a position several cm above the bottom of the tube. A 10 m length of .25 cm diameter braided polypropylene line, attached to a ring threaded into the top of the piston, was pulled through the core tube. The core tube was then carefully lowered through the moon pool and any air trapped in the space between piston and the bottom of the core tube was removed and filled with water. When the tube was several cm above the bottom the free end of line attached to the piston was affixed to the head of the tripod. Thus when the core tube penetrates the sediment the piston remains in a fixed position a few cm above the sediment surface producing a vacuum that retards compaction. When the apparatus was set in positions the core tube was quickly thrust about 30 cm into the sediment by hand. Next, an aluminum clamp with handles was fixed to the core tube and two people then forced the core barrel in until it reached the underlying Pleistocene limestone. Next the clamp with handles was removed and a clamp with lifting rings was attached near the air/water interface. A cable through a pulley at the top of the tripod and attached to a hand winch mounted on one leg of the tripod was attached to the lifting ring on the clamp. The cable winch was necessary for extraction due to the weight of the core and strong suction created by the mud. Before extraction, the polypropylene line was removed from the tripod and fixed to the extraction clamp. This was to ensure that the piston remained in a fixed position during extraction and to retard loss of sediment from the bottom of the barrel. A benefit of the clear core tubing was that any leakage around the piston's O-ring seal could be readily observed during the extraction process. A person in the water wearing a face mask observed the core tube to be certain no sediment was lost at the sediment/water interface, to record any elevation difference between the sediment surface inside and outside the core at full penetration, and to quickly place a plastic pipe cap on the bottom of the core as it emerged from the sediment. The core was winched above the surface of the moon pool and lowered to rest vertically on deck. The pipe cap was taped tightly to the tube to prevent leakage. Excess tubing was cut off just below the piston using a large pipe cutter so the piston could be carefully removed without disturbing the sediment surface. In some cases the water above the sediment was carefully siphoned off with a tube to prevent sloshing of water during transport to the laboratory which would disturb the sediment surface. In other cases the piston was left in the core tube during transport. All cores were transported vertically. Each evening cores were transported vertically to a local hospital where X-ray photographs were prepared.

The cores were selected for analysis based on the x-rays. Those cores selected for further analysis were selected on the basis of laminations or other features which indicated the lack of disturbance. The core was placed in an extruding device vertically. The core was then extruded up into a template and sliced. This slice (hockey puck) was placed on a preweighed titanium plate and the wet weight determined. The ring was then removed and the slice was trimmed to remove the outer portion of the core. This was done to prevent any contamination that may have occurred at the side of the core barrel during the coring operation. This sample was then bagged and weighed. This weight was found to be important in the determination of water content and thus the dry weigh as water was lost during the period of initial sampling and the laboratory analysis. These sample were then stored in a refrigerator and then transhipped to the home based laboratory. For those core selected for trace metal analysis, the slices were sampled from the center of the "hockey puck" with titanium tools and place in an acid washed plastic bottle and frozen.

Approximately 50 short cores were planned to be collected for analysis of flora, faunal, and charcoal abundances. The cores were dated using 210Pb and 14C. Additionally, pollen, plant macrofossils, and invertebrate faunas were analyzed from surface samples. These samples were collected from sites throughout the region to maximize representation of modern plant communities. The resulting data provided the basis for comparison with down-core assemblages to determine how much change in vegetational distribution has occurred.

Process_Date: 1997

Process_Step:

Process_Description:

Age models for the last century of deposition are based on lead-210 (210Pb) and, where applicable, first occurrences of pollen of the exotic plant Casuarina, which was introduced to south Florida in the late 19th century (Langeland 1990). Lead-210 activity was measured by alpha spectroscopy using the method outlined in Flynn (1968) in which 210Pb and its progeny, polonium-210 (210Po), are assumed to be in secular equilibrium. Supported 210Pb activity was determined by continuing measurements until activity became constant with depth. Excess 210Pb activity was calculated by subtracting the supported 210Pb activity from the total 210Pb activity. Accumulation rates were calculated by fitting an exponential decay curve to the measured data using least-squares optimization and making the assumptions of a constant initial excess lead-210 concentration (the constant initial concentration [CIC] model).

Process_Date: 1997

Process_Step:

Process_Description:

Approximately 0.5 - 1.0 g of dry sediment was used for palynological analysis. Pollen and spores were isolated from these samples using standard palynological techniques (Traverse 1988). After drying and weighing samples, Lycopodium marker tablets with known concentrations of Lycopodium spores were added to approx. 0.5 g of sediment for calculation of absolute pollen concentrations (Stockmarr 1971). The samples were first acetolyzed (9 parts acetic anhydride : 1 part sulfuric acid) in a hot-water bath (100 deg. C) for 10 min, then neutralized and treated with 10% KOH in a hot-water bath for 15 min. Neutralized samples were sieved with 10-micron and 200-micron sieves, and the 10 - 200 lm fraction was stained with Bismarck Brown, mixed with warm glycerin jelly, and mounted on microscope slides. Raw data for pollen samples are reposited in the North American Pollen Database (NAPD) at the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology in Boulder, Colorado, USA, and at the US Geological Survey South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) site.

Pollen and spore identification (minimally 300 grains per sample) was based on reference collections of the U.S. Geological Survey (Reston, Virginia). Pollen sums were based on abundance of all identifiable taxa. The interpretations of past plant communities are based on the quantitative method of modern analogues (Overpeck et al. 1985). The squared chord distance (SCD) between down-core pollen assemblages and a suite of 197 surface samples collected throughout southern Florida in the early 1960s and 1995 to define the similarity between each fossil and modern pollen assemblage. Internal comparison among surface samples from 10 vegetation types indicates that samples with SCD values approx. 0.15 may be considered close analogues (Willard et al. 2001). If analogues were present for a fossil assemblage, the source vegetation for the fossil assemblage was identified as one of the 12 types represented in the modern database. Cores were divided into pollen zones based on a combination of visual inspection, objective zonation using CONISS (Grimm 1992), and modern analogues.

Process_Date: 2000

Process_Contact:

Contact_Information:

Contact_Person_Primary:

Contact_Person: Debra A Willard

Contact_Organization: U.S. Geological Survey

Contact_Address:

Address_Type: mailing address

Address: 926A National Center

City: Reston

State_or_Province: VA

Postal_Code: 20192

Contact_Voice_Telephone: 703 648 5320

Contact_Facsimile_Telephone: 703 648 6953

Contact_Electronic_Mail_Address: dwillard@usgs.gov

Spatial_Data_Organization_Information:

Indirect_Spatial_Reference: Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay

Direct_Spatial_Reference_Method: Point

Point_and_Vector_Object_Information:

SDTS_Terms_Description:

SDTS_Point_and_Vector_Object_Type: Point

Point_and_Vector_Object_Count: 5

Spatial_Reference_Information:

Horizontal_Coordinate_System_Definition:

Geographic:

Latitude_Resolution: 0.01

Longitude_Resolution: 0.01

Geographic_Coordinate_Units: Degrees and decimal minutes

Geodetic_Model:

Horizontal_Datum_Name: North American Datum of 1983

Ellipsoid_Name: Geodetic Reference System 80

Semi-major_Axis: 6378137

Denominator_of_Flattening_Ratio: 298.257

Entity_and_Attribute_Information:

Overview_Description:

Entity_and_Attribute_Overview:

The pollen data are listed by species and depth in the core. See the individual datasets for the species found at each site. Pollen sums are based on abundance of all identifiable taxa.

Entity_and_Attribute_Detail_Citation: USGS personnel

Distribution_Information:

Distributor:

Contact_Information:

Contact_Person_Primary:

Contact_Person: Heather S.Henkel

Contact_Organization: U.S. Geological Survey

Contact_Address:

Address_Type: mailing address

Address: 600 Fourth St. South

City: St. Petersburg

State_or_Province: FL

Postal_Code: 33701

Country: USA

Contact_Voice_Telephone: 727 803-8747 ext 3028

Contact_Facsimile_Telephone: 727 803-2030

Contact_Electronic_Mail_Address: hhenkel@usgs.gov

Resource_Description: FL and Biscayne Bays Pollen Data

Distribution_Liability: The data have no implied or explicit guarantees

Standard_Order_Process:

Digital_Form:

Digital_Transfer_Information:

Format_Name: Excel spreadsheets

Format_Information_Content:

Pollen data is available as a separate spreadsheet for individual sample sites

Transfer_Size: 0.047

Digital_Transfer_Option:

Online_Option:

Computer_Contact_Information:

Network_Address:

Network_Resource_Name: <http://sofia.usgs.gov/exchange/willard/willardpollen.html>

Access_Instructions: Data may be downloaded from the SOFIA website

Fees: none

Metadata_Reference_Information:

Metadata_Date: 20080116

Metadata_Contact:

Contact_Information:

Contact_Person_Primary:

Contact_Person: Heather Henkel

Contact_Organization: U.S. Geological Survey

Contact_Address:

Address_Type: mailing and physical address

Address: 600 Fourth Street South

City: St. Petersburg

State_or_Province: FL

Postal_Code: 33701

Country: USA

Contact_Voice_Telephone: 727 803-8747 ext 3028

Contact_Facsimile_Telephone: 727 803-2030

Contact_Electronic_Mail_Address: sofia-metadata@usgs.gov

Metadata_Standard_Name: Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata

Metadata_Standard_Version: FGDC-STD-001-1998

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Comments and suggestions? Contact: Heather Henkel - Webmaster
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