Speech given to the American Quaternary Association at Flagstaff:
May 2nd, 1996
The term career commonly implies an intentional course toward a
particular goal, as in a musical career, directed toward excellence and ever
more fame. But more often than not with academics, no goal is in sight, for the
direction is influenced by random events and outside developments in the
particular field of scholarship. One might better refer a checkered career,
without the moral implications commonly associated with that term. Thus I
started out as a student of biology, with a thought also of history, following
the footsteps of my sister, but a grand trip to the west turned my head to
landscapes and their patterns, and I shifted my studies to arid-region
geomorphology, encouraged by the mentor who similarly influenced so many
others -- Kirk Bryan. But it was not the landforms themselves that provided
the appeal so much as their history, for in so many cases they were shaped by
processes no longer active The same dichotomy was expressed in my subsequent
explorations of Minnesota glacial geology. Here it was not so much the
attractions of the varied landforrns or even the details of the processes that
formed them but rather the history of their development in the context of
climate and other environmental forces. My superficial treatment of processes
led me the adage I often appeal to when faced with an unexpected glacial
landform -- when in doubt, add ice. This is not to deprecate the efforts of
geomorphologists and glaciologists who concentrate on analysis of process by
making highly detailed observations of geomorphic agents in the field or on
experiments or models, for the results of their investigations lend credibility
to historical reconstructions.
But historical approaches themselves, which are the focus of most
Quaternary scientists, received a great boost from perhaps the major
technological development of recent time in Quaternary srudies -- the
introduction of radiocarbon dating. It is hard to imagine today how we operated
before 1950, with dating only by loose correlation with distant glacial events
that themsleves were dated in the most primitive way. History is nothing
without chronology, and the hundreds of thousands of radiocarbon dates made
since that time have allowed reconstruction of events at far corners of the
world and have attracted more and more investigators to Quaternary science, at
least for the portion of the time scale susceptible to radiocarbon dating. But
now comes the revelation that the radiocarbon time scale differs from an
absolute time scale by significant amounts, especially for that magic date of
10,000 years ago that separates the Pleistocene from the Holocene. This
development has attracted cosmic physicists and geophysicists and
oceanographers into the Quaternary field and has stimulated the rest of us to
search ever harder for the field and analytical data to test the flood of
hypotheses that are generated to explain the ways of the world over past
millennia.
But to get back to careers. Radiocarbon dating was the force that
changed my activities from geomorphology to paleoecology and paleolimnology, in
a gradual kind of way. Organic matter is the sine que non of
radiocarbon dating, and no better place exists for the accumulation of organic
matter than lakes. It happens that I was working simultaneously in the Chuska
Mountains of northwestern New Mexico, which are dotted with lakes, and on the
glacial morphology and stratigraphy of Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes.
Furthermore, datable lake sediments contain microfossils of terrestrial and
aquatic plants and animals that themselves hold many stories of environmental
and climatic history -- the heart of Quaternary studies. Pollen analysis of
lake sediments brought me back into the field of biology, especially in its
ecological and biogeographic aspects as applied to Quaternary history, and it
has been satisfying to see how regional climatic history as inferred from
pollen studies is now matched by the insights on processes gained from
paleoclimatic modeling of the general circulation of the atmosphere. And my
association with the Limnological Research Center opened my eyes to the potentials
of lake sediments to record the history of natural hydrologic and limnological
processes as well as human impacts on the watersheds.
This brings me to two facets in the careers of many Quaternary
scientists, both related to human impact on the natural systems. One is the
effort to evaluate the effects of human activities in the modern industrial
world. For many this takes the form of local studies concerning the history and
magnitude of water pollution, soil degradation, desertification, timber
cutting, river management, etc. Such studies may be confined to speculation
when the investigation is limited to short-term experiments or to
quantification of modern processes on disturbed landscapes or ecosystems.
Knowledge of the natural conditions prior to disturbance is essential. This is
the sphere of the Quaternary scientist, who can make significant contributions
to public and political understanding of environmental science and its relation
to human welfare.
The other facet concerning interactions of human societies with the
environment is in the archaeological field. This is of greatest importance in
Europe, where episodes of cultural change since the Neolithic thousands of
years ago are manifested not only by archaeological findings themselves but in
lake-sediment archives, which can record deforestation, land use, watershed
erosion, water pollution, and various forms of agriculture by analysis of the
pollen, diatom, sedimentological, geochemical, and geomagnetic components. When
accompanied by insights concerninc the processes by which these components are
produced and preserved in the sediments, a lot can be said about the
environment and lifeways of ancient people.
So in my case the career in question has taken many gradual turns,
partly in response to technological breakthroughs and new paradigms in the
Quaternary sciences and partly through my attempts to become familiar with
different approaches to natural history, not only in aspects of geology, which
has been my academic base, but in ecology, limnology, glaciology, and
archaeology. Particularly rewarding have been the opportunities to discuss
aspects of Quaternary history with a diverse group of specialists, and perhaps
persuade at least some of them that interdisciplinary approaches are
synergistic. All of us have an interdisciplinary bias, for our focus is on the
history of a well-recorded and action-packed segment of geological time.
Academically, Quaternary science in the curriculum is analogous, for example,
to a subject listed as humanities in the 18th century -- a combination of the
arts, philosophy, and literature in the context of political, economic, and
military history. So for the Quaternary, we have the history of geologic,
ecologic, limnologic, and oceanographic processes acting in the context of
repeated climatic change, with the opportunity to put them in a reliable
chronologic framework. Recognition of a career that has attempted to recognize
the interplay among these processes is a great personal satisfaction,
especially because my predilection towards history seems to have come to an
unintentional climax, despite its peripatetic course. I guess I feel that this
award is an award to the essence of Quaternary studies, and I congratulate you
all for succumbing to its attractions.
E-mail Herb at hew@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Last updated October 22nd, 1996.
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