A CARBON-DATED POLLEN DIAGRAM FROM THE CAPE BRETON PLATEAU, NOVA SCOTIA

Organic sedimentation in a lake near the southwestern edge of the Cape Breton Plateau began about 9000 years ago. Before that time the vegetation was an open tundra, probably with scattered conifer and poplar trees. Since then the vegetation has been dominated by closed fir forest of a variety of types not dissimilar to forests growing in various parts of Nova Scotia today. Organic sedimentation and the establishment of forest, and by implication deglaciation, began more recently at Wreck Cove Lake than at any other Nova Scotian locality that has been investigated. The establishment of forest occurred 1300 years sooner in part of lowland Cape Breton, and 1800 years sooner in part of mainland Nova Scotia, than it did on the Cape Breton Plateau. The length of postglacial, preforest time, which cannot be measured by radiocarbon dating, appears to have been much shorter at Wreck Cove than it was in lowland Cape Breton. The Cape Breton Plateau was not, as some phytogeographers have suggested, a nunatak during glacial time. It may have been a center of late-glacial readvance.