Craig M. Lee

Montana State University | MSU

Climate-driven changes in high-elevation forest distribution and reductions in snow and ice cover have major implications for ecosystems and global water security. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains (United States), recent melting of a high-elevation (3,091 m asl) ice patch exposed a mature stand of whitebark pine ( Pinus a...

Growing season temperatures play a crucial role in controlling treeline elevation at regional to global scales. However, understanding of treeline dynamics in response to long-term changes in temperature is limited. In this study, we analyze pollen, plant macrofossils, and charcoal preserved in organic layers within a 10,400-year-old ice patch and...

Ice patches are an irreplaceable archive of past events. With atypical melting now occurring around the world, it is important to be able to quantify and interpret the potential of what remains in areas of archaeological interest. A ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey was conducted at an archaeologically productive ice patch in the Greater Yellow...

Paleoclimate records from ice cores generally are considered to be the most direct indicators of environmental change, but are rare from mid-latitude, continental regions such as the western United States. High-elevation ice patches are known to be important archaeological archives in alpine regions and potentially could provide records important f...

Ice patches and the alpine are important elements of the sociocultural landscape of the Greater Yellowstone Area, and they transcend the jurisdictional boundaries that divide the lands on which they occur. The ice patch record complements traditional sources of archaeological knowledge through the addition of well-dated organic artifacts, such as s...

Microcores and microliths have been identified in archaeological sites in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. While clearly the product of patterned reduction yielding flakes with roughly parallel sides, the cores seldom produced regular flake removals, suggesting a high degree of variability in the resulting microliths. This irregular pattern of r...

In the mid-latitude mountains of North America, archaeological materials have been identified in association with kinetically stable "ice patches" that attracted animals and their human predators. The stable ice in these features exhibits little internal deformation or movement and can preserve otherwise perishable materials for millennia. Eight pr...

The Frazier site (5WL268) has been interpreted as a single component bison kill and processing site representative of the Paleoindian Agate Basin complex in northeastern Colorado. The site was excavated in the 1960s by H. Marie Wormington. An examination of six accelerator mass spectrometry C-14 radiocarbon dates recently obtained on bison bone (am...

In September, 2006, we found the remains of timber-sized spruce trees ( Picea engelmannii) on the floors of melting ice patches at altitudes of 3465—3480 m in the Mummy Range of north-central Colorado. The ice patches occupy northeast-facing recesses in which windblown snow, scoured from a tundra upland to the southwest, accumulates deeply. We hypo...

Melting and retreating glaciers and ice patches (aniuvat) have revealed frozen archaeological remains on several continents, including North America. Artifacts from these sites provide information about high-latitude and high-altitude human adaptations and unique insights into prehistoric material culture. A Geographic Information System (GIS) mode...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-42).