Climate of the Past www.clim-past.net 1814-9324 1814-9332 3 1 2007 10.5194/cp-3-109-2007 http://www.clim-past.net/3/109/2007/ http://www.clim-past.net/3/109/2007/cp-3-109-2007.html http://www.clim-past.net/3/109/2007/cp-3-109-2007.pdf 109 118 2007-02-12 Predicting Pleistocene climate from vegetation in North America C. Loehle craigloehl@aol.com National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc., 552 S Washington St., #224, Naperville, IL 60540, USA Climates at the Last Glacial Maximum have been inferred from fossil pollen assemblages, but these inferred climates are colder for eastern North America than those produced by climate simulations. It has been suggested that low CO₂ levels could account for this discrepancy. In this study biogeographic evidence is used to test the CO₂ effect model. The recolonization of glaciated zones in eastern North America following the last ice age produced distinct biogeographic patterns. It has been assumed that a wide zone south of the ice was tundra or boreal parkland (Boreal-Parkland Zone or BPZ), which would have been recolonized from southern refugia as the ice melted, but the patterns in this zone differ from those in the glaciated zone, which creates a major biogeographic anomaly. In the glacial zone, there are few endemics but in the BPZ there are many across multiple taxa. In the glacial zone, there are the expected gradients of genetic diversity with distance from the ice-free zone, but no evidence of this is found in the BPZ. Many races and related species exist in the BPZ which would have merged or hybridized if confined to the same refugia. Evidence for distinct southern refugia for most temperate species is lacking. Extinctions of temperate flora were rare. The interpretation of spruce as a boreal climate indicator may be mistaken over much of the region if the spruce was actually an extinct temperate species. 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