Date of Award

Spring 6-8-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Earth Sciences

First Advisor

Meredith Kelly

Second Advisor

Justin Stroup

Abstract

The goal of this project is to reconstruct the deglaciation and post-glacial environmental conditions of northern Vermont that occurred during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, ~15,000 to 11,000 years ago. This transition marks a major climatic shift, from a glacial period to an interglacial period, and regionally involved the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS). The retreat of the LIS influenced the surficial geology of North America, exposing the Earth’s surface, leaving glacial deposits, and carving out proglacial lakes. The timing of ice retreat in the region provides information about past climate conditions, which may inform inferences about current ice-sheet fluctuations. This study uses analyses of a sediment core from May Pond, Barton, Vermont, and cosmogenic beryllium-10 (10Be) surface exposure dating of nearby surficial deposits to understand the timing of LIS retreat and the postglacial evolution of the landscape. The oldest radiocarbon age from the sediment core record is ~13,970 cal yr BP (calibrated median age), with a modeled basal age of ~17,110 cal yr BP, showing deglaciation at ~17,110-13,970 cal yr BP. Three 10Be samples collected southeast of May Pond indicate a mean deglaciation age of ~13,600 yrs, and one sample collected northeast of the pond indicates a deglaciation age of ~11,070 yrs. This study is one of few New England-based projects combining sediment core and cosmogenic 10Be analyses to reconstruct ice-sheet retreat and climate conditions during the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs.

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