Problems of Pollen Zone Correlation in Southeastern Canada

The region discussed in this paper includes the Maritime Provinces of Canada and southeastern Quebec (see figure 1) with some reference to the adjoining New England States and Xewfoundland.The early palynological studies made by Auer (1930), Bowman (1931) and Radfortli (1945) showed that regionally consistent changes occurred in tlic pollen diagrams.More than 20 diagrams published by h e r all showed evidence of climatic changes i n postglacial time and the sequence of the changes was similar to those established in northern Europe.However, no means of absolute dating were available for these events in southcastern Canada.The rarre chronology n.orl;ecl out hy Anters (1925) was difficult to apply to the region and the postglacial history of the area was insufficiently known.Because of these clifficulties, and a lack of necessary background data in general, Auer did not divide his pollen diagrams into zones, Dccvcy used the somewhat generalized zone system (A-the early forest time; B-the pine zone; C--decicluous forest zone) which he subdivided later (1943, 1949) and added the older, latc-glacial I, zones at the hottom (1951).Potzger in 1953 used a fire zone system in southern Quebec n.here zone 1 was the.earliest postglacial one.Ignatius (19%) used a three zone system (zone 1 being tlic oldest) for areas nosth of the St. Lawrence River.Terasmae (1959) proposed a sequence of sis zones for the St. Lawrence lowlands.The zones were numbered from top downward in the hope that when older zones were encountered the numbering could be simply extended.Livingstone (1958) and Ogtlen (1960) follo Deevcy's pollen zone sequence in their studies in Xova Scotia.