LIME HOLLOW, NEW YORK, MARL DEPOSITION AND PALEOENVIRONMENTS

Description: Protection of imperiled plants and animals often requires information about where organisms occurred in the past and under what conditions. When a holding pond at the National Biological Survey Station in Cortland, New York, was deepened, abundant moss and vascular plant fossils were uncovered as marl was dug out from the bottom of the pond. The plant fossils are about 10,000 years old, and some of species are rare or extirpated in New York. One of the mosses is known from a single station near Byron (Genesee County) where it may still persist in the ecologically remarkable Bergen Swamp Preserve. Studies of the Lime Hollow sediments provide insights on protection strategies for various plant species that have become rare in New York through the combined influences of climate change, landscape development, and land-use patterns.

Principal Investigator: Norton G. Miller

Collaborators:

Project Year: 1995-ongoing

Project Products (last five years):

Miller, N. G., & L. Leonardi. A Pleistocene-Holocene transition flora from central New York, and the extirpation of wetland calcicole plants. (Abstr.) Program and Abstracts New York Natural History Conference IV, pp. 28. 1996.

Geographic Extent: Cortland County, New York

Category: paleoecology, plant fossils, Pleistocene Holocene, marl, extirpation, rare plants