Bruce P. Finney

Idaho State University | ISU · Departments of Biological Sciences and Geosciences

A compilation of paleoclimate records from lake sediments, trees, glaciers, and marine sediments provides a view of circum-Arctic environmental variability over the last 400 years. From 1840 to the mid-20th century, the Arctic warmed to the highest temperatures in four centuries. This warming ended the Little Ice Age in the Arctic and has caused re...

We present a 6,000-yr record of changing water balance in the Pacific Northwest inferred from measurements of carbonate δ(18)O and grayscale on a sediment core collected from Castor Lake, Washington. This subdecadally resolved drought record tracks the 1,500-yr tree-ring-based Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions of Cook et al. [Cook ER, W...

The extension of growing season at high northern latitudes seems increasingly clear from satellite observations of vegetation extent and duration. This extension is also thought to explain the observed increase in amplitude of seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Increased plant respiration and photosynthesis both correlate well wi...

The effects of climate variability on Pacific salmon abundance are uncertain because historical records are short and are complicated by commercial harvesting and habitat alteration. We use lake sediment records of δ15N and biological indicators to reconstruct sockeye salmon abundance in the Bristol Bay and Kodiak Island regions of Alaska over the...

Historical catch records suggest that climatic variability has had basin-wide effects on the northern Pacific and its fish populations, such as salmon, sardines and anchovies. However, these records are too short to define the nature and frequency of patterns. We reconstructed approximately 2,200-year records of sockeye salmon abundance from sedime...

Variability in the source and seasonality of precipitation in the midcontinental United States during the Holocene was investigated using isotopic and sedimentological data from Martin Lake, northeastern Indiana, USA. Between 7100 and 4000 years before present (yr BP; present = 1950 CE), high δ18Ocal and δ13Ccal values with low variability indicate...

Babine Lake, British Columbia, is Canada's largest sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) nursery lake, sustaining numerous ecosystem services (e.g., fisheries, recreation, cultural and spiritual benefits). The lake and its watershed have experienced significant anthropogenic and natural disturbances since the early 1900's, including extensive logging...

The Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) and Critical Zone Observatory (CZO), located south of the western Snake River Plain in the Intermountain West of the United States, is the site of over 60 years of research aimed at understanding integrated earth processes in a semi‐arid climate to aid sustainable use of environmental resources. Mete...

The Sawtooth Fault in central Idaho, USA, is a range‐bounding normal fault with a Late Pleistocene–Holocene scarp near the up‐valley ends of several range‐front lakes. Cores from Redfish Lake, which spans the fault, exhibit evidence of catastrophic sediment re‐mobilization in two sequences consisting variably of intraclastic mud‐clast conglomerate,...

While freshwater and anadromous fish have been critical economic resources for late prehistoric and modern Native Americans, the origin and development of fishing is not well understood. We document the earliest known human use of freshwater and anadromous fish in North America by 13,000 and 11,800 years ago, respectively, from primary anthropogeni...

Ecological theory predicts a pulse disturbance results in loss of soil organic carbon and short-term respiration losses that exceed recovery of productivity in many ecosystems. However, fundamental uncertainties remain in our understanding of ecosystem recovery where spatiotemporal variation in structure and function are not adequately represented...

For assessment of the potential of the Beppu Bay sediments as a Global Boundaries Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) candidate for the Anthropocene, we have integrated datasets of 99 proxies. The datasets for the sequences date back 100 years for most proxy records and 1300 years for several records. The cumulative number of occurrences of the ant...

Little is known about the dynamics of marine food chains spanning primary to higher trophic levels on centennial and longer timescales, especially where the supply of dissolved iron limits primary productivity. To elucidate the long-term dynamics of biological productivity in the Coastal Oyashio (CO), which is a major pathway for transporting disso...

A multiproxy analysis of a sediment core from Glukhoye Lake in the southern Kuril Islands indicates that the basin originated c. 8.2 cal. ka BP as a brackish lagoon with the subsequent development of a freshwater lake (c. 4.0 to 3.3 cal. ka BP), a bog (c. 3.3 to 2.4 cal. ka BP) and a second lake (c. 2.4 cal. ka BP to present). The basin history pri...

A submillennial-resolution record of lake water oxygen isotope composition (δ¹⁸O) from chironomid head capsules is presented from Burial Lake, north-west Alaska. The record spans the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~20–16k cal a bp) to the present and shows a series of large lake δ¹⁸O shifts (~5‰). Relatively low δ¹⁸O values occurred during a period cov...

Plain Language Summary To place recent environmental change around the Arctic in context, it is necessary to document change during time periods warmer than present, such as the early Holocene. A particularly useful tool to document changes in hydrology and climate over time, such as the balance between precipitation minus evaporation (P−E) are oxy...

Anthropogenic CO 2 emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion have caused declines in baseline oceanic δ ¹³ C values. This phenomenon, called the Suess effect, can confound comparisons of marine δ ¹³ C data from different years. The Suess effect can be corrected for mathematically; however, a variety of disparate techniques are currently used...

Peri-urban lakes offer many valued ecosystem services, but their vulnerability to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances increases with increasing human populations the effects and interactions of multiple stressors on lakes can lead to unexpected outcomes, affecting societal and ecological values, it is necessary to evaluate ecosystem traje...

The stock-specific distribution of maturing salmon in the North Pacific has been a persistent information gap that has prevented us from determining the ocean conditions experienced by individual stocks. This continues to impede understanding of the role of ocean conditions in stock-specific population dynamics. We assessed scale archives for 17 so...

The earliest Native Americans have often been portrayed as either megafaunal specialists or generalist foragers, but this debate cannot be resolved by studying the faunal record alone. Stable isotope analysis directly reveals the foods consumed by individuals. We present multi-tissue isotope analyses of two Ancient Beringian infants from the Upward...

A high-resolution, multiproxy analysis of a core from Tokotan Lake, Urup Island, illustrates the complex paleoenvironmental signals that can be preserved in sedimentary deposits from geologically active areas, such as the Kuril Archipelago. Diatom and geochemical analyses of the Tokotan core suggest a shallowing and lessening of the lake area over...

The ability to distinguish between different migratory behaviours (e.g., anadromy and potamodromy) in fish can provide important insights into the ecology, evolution, and conservation of many aquatic species. We present a simple stable carbon isotope (δ¹³C) approach for distinguishing between sockeye (anadromous ocean migrants) and kokanee (potamod...

Vegetation greenness has increased across much of the global land surface over recent decades. This trend is projected to continue – particularly in northern latitudes – but future greening may be constrained by nutrient availability needed for plant carbon (C) assimilation in response to CO2 enrichment (eCO2). eCO2 impacts foliar chemistry and fun...

Early migrants to the Americas were likely seaworthy. Many archaeologists now agree that the first humans who traveled to the Americas more than 15,000 years before present (yr BP) used a coastal North Pacific route. Their initial migration was from northeastern Asia to Beringia where they settled for thousands to more than ten thousand years. Ocea...

Beginning with the nineteenth-century territorial surveys, the lakes and lacustrine deposits in what is now the western United States were recognized for their economic value to the expanding nation. In the latter half of the twentieth century, these systems have been acknowledged as outstanding examples of depositional systems serving as models fo...

Objectives Stable isotope ratio analysis of bulk bone collagen dominates research into past diet; however, bone carbonate and compound specific isotope analyses (CSIA) of amino acids provide alternative, yet complementary, lines of evidence toward that same research goal. Together they inform on different aspects of diet, allowing greater certainty...

The current state of permafrost in Alaska and meaningful expectations for its future evolution are informed by long-term perspectives on previous permafrost degradation. Thermokarst processes in permafrost landscapes often lead to widespread lake formation and the spatial and temporal evolution of thermokarst lake landscapes reflects the combined e...

Dryland ecosystems are experiencing shifts in rainfall and plant community composition, which are expected to alter cycling and storage of soil carbon (C). Few experiments have been conducted to examine long‐term effects on (1) soil organic C (SOC) pools throughout the soil profile, and (2) soil inorganic C (SIC) pools as they relate to dynamic cha...

Multi-proxy sediment records from Castor Lake and Scanlon Lake, north-central Washington, provide a late Quaternary perspective on lake/catchment hydrologic and ecosystem responses to climate change and the Mazama volcanic ashfall event. Analyses of authigenic carbonate mineral oxygen and carbon isotope values, organic carbon and nitrogen content,...

During recent decades, lake levels in the Yukon Flats region of interior Alaska have fluctuated dramatically. However, prior to recorded observations, no data are available to indicate if similar or more extreme variations occurred during past centuries and millennia. This study explores the history of Yukon Flats lake origins and lake levels for t...

Stable nitrogen isotope (δ¹⁵N) data from sediment cores taken in clear-water Upper Russian Lake (Kenai River Watershed, Alaska, USA) indicate that sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) populations varied significantly over the past 4000 years, with a prominent ~ 650-year period of lower salmon abundance from ~ 100 BCE to 550 CE. Sediment characterist...

Holocene records of lacustrine primary production are commonly used to reconstruct past changes in environmental and climatic conditions. While several methods exist to infer paleoproductivity trends, few studies to date have applied multiple geochemical indices in the same core sequence from Arctic lakes to evaluate their fidelity and sensitivity...

The Holocene upwelling history of the northern California continental slope is examined using the highresolution record of TN062-O550 (40.9°N, 124.6°W, 550 m water depth). This 7-m-long marine sediment core spans the last ~7500 years, and we use it to test the hypothesis that marine productivity in the California Current System (CCS) driven by coas...

The population size of anadromous salmon in the Pacific Northwest is strongly influenced by decadal variation in watershed and oceanographic conditions and therefore should also be influenced by larger magnitude millennial-scale variations in these conditions. We studied δ ¹⁵ N of bulk organic matter in lake sediment from Woahink Lake, Oregon, as a...

Herd Lake is located roughly 35 miles south of Challis, Idaho in the Salmon River basin. The lake formed during a three kilometer-long landslide event that dammed a river valley approximately 2,500 years ago. Herd Lake exhibits very high productivity and sediment burial rates resulting in nearly continuous, thick, seasonal laminations (varves) in t...

We assessed historical presence of sockeye salmon in Eklutna Lake, Alaska, prior to construction of a diversion dam on the downstream Eklutna River in 1929, using nitrogen stable isotopes measured in a lacustrine core 93 cm long. Sediments in the core were dated using varve counts, verified by 210Pb and 137Cs measurements. The basal date of the cor...

Rationale: Reconstructing stable isotope (SI) ratios at the base of paleo-food webs is often challenging. For coastal systems, the SI ratios of organic matter in archeological shell represents a possible solution, providing a direct record of primary consumer SI ratios in the littoral zone. However, shell is often porous, with organic compounds su...

Two lake records document Holocene changes in sea level, vegetation, and climate on the Okhotsk and Pacific sides of central Iturup Island, southern Kuril Islands. The sediment cores originated within tidal flats that subsequently developed into a marine strait which crosscut the island as sea levels rose during the early Holocene. Brackish lagoons...

Herd Lake formed during a landslide event that dammed a river valley approximately 2,500 years ago. The lake is located approximately 35 miles south of Challis, Idaho. Herd Lake exhibits very high productivity and sediment burial rates compared to other lakes in the Salmon River basin. This has resulted in thick, seasonal laminations (varves) in th...

The oligotrophic condition of salmon-bearing catchments in the Columbia River Basin is a potential limiting factor for the recovery of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). To address this issue, nutrient supplementation programs attempt to mitigate for reduced marine-derived nutrients (MDN). We examined the assimilation of MDN in the biota of tribut...

Previous research on the small mammal population recovered from archeological excavations at the Wasden Site in southeastern Idaho suggests that changing frequency distributions through time represent a shift in climate during the early Holocene from a cooler, wetter regime to a warmer, drier one. This conclusion was re-evaluated using stable carbo...

Psychoactive pharmaceuticals have been found as teratogens at clinical dosage during pregnancy. These pharmaceuticals have also been detected in minute (ppb) concentrations in drinking water in the US, and are environmental contaminants that may be complicit in triggering neurological disorders in genetically susceptible individuals. Previous studi...

Herd Lake formed during a landslide event that dammed a river valley approximately 2,500 years ago. The lake is located approximately 35 miles south of Challis, Idaho. Herd Lake exhibits very high productivity and sediment burial rates compared to other lakes in the Salmon River basin, resulting in nearly continuous, thick, seasonal laminations (va...

Herd Lake formed during a landslide event that dammed a river valley approximately 2,500 years ago. The lake is located approximately 35 miles south of Challis, Idaho. Herd Lake exhibits very high productivity and sediment burial rates compared to other lakes in the Salmon River basin, resulting in nearly continuous, thick, seasonal laminations (va...

Stand-replacing wildfires are a keystone disturbance in the boreal forest, and they are becoming more common as the climate warms. Paleo-fire archives from the wildland–urban interface can quantify the prehistoric fire regime and assess how both human land-use and climate change impact ecosystem dynamics. Here, we use a combination of a sedimentary...

Lake sediment oxygen isotope records (calcium carbonate-δ18O) in the western North American Cordillera developed during the past decade provide substantial evidence of Pacific ocean–atmosphere forcing of hydroclimatic variability during the Holocene. Here we present an overview of 18 lake sediment δ18O records along with a new compilation of lake w...

Diatom, rock magnetic, geochemical, and lithological studies of a sediment core from Paramushir Island (northern Kuril Archipelago) trace environmental shifts from bog to salt-water lagoon to freshwater lake over the past 10,000 14C BP. Organic-rich mesic landscapes dominated the southern island until ~8200 14C BP. Transgression of the Sea of Okhot...