Journal article
Controls on the southwest USA hydroclimate over the last six glacial-interglacial cycles
- Abstract:
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The Great Basin in the southwest United States experienced major hydroclimate shifts throughout the Quaternary. Understanding the drivers behind these past changes has become increasingly important for improving future climate projections. Here, we present an absolute-dated δ18O and δ13C record from Devils Hole cave 2 (southern Nevada) that reveals climate and environmental changes in the southern Great Basin over the last 580,000 years. Water isotope-enabled Earth system simulations and phasing analysis show that temperature-related mechanisms are a primary driver of δ18O variability, with additional drivers stemming from processes linked to North American ice sheets. Vegetation density in the highlands of southern Nevada is primarily forced by Northern Hemisphere summer intensity. A rapid decline in primary productivity occurs during warm interglacial periods when local groundwater recharge declines to <50% above modern. Our study sheds new light on the relationship between temperature, moisture balance, and vegetation over the last six glacial-interglacial cycles.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-025-64963-1
Authors
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/021nxhr62
- Grant:
- 2102944
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 10007
- Publication date:
- 2025-11-14
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-10-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2327057
- UUID:
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uuid_4b897f5a-31c2-47be-9244-9004c55359cf
- Local pid:
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pubs:2327057
- Deposit date:
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2025-11-14
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Wendt et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2025, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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