Faculty and Staff

Joanne P Ballard

ballarjn@mail.uc.edu
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009NC/finalprogram/abstract_156368.htm

Professional Summary

While establishing a paleofire record for Michigan, I also tested the Firestone et al. (2007, PNAS) hypothesis that a comet impacted North America 12,900 years ago, causing the extinction of mammoths, ending the Clovis culture, triggering the Younger Dryas climate interval, and setting off massive wildfires. Black mats (at archaeological sites) containing iridium, extraterrestrial fullerenes, nanodiamonds, magnetic microspherules, carbon spherules, glasslike carbon etc. have been cited as evidence for the impact event. An airburst is hypothesized as there is not an impact structure in North America associated with this time.

A focus of my study has been the biomass burning aspect of the Firestone et al. (2007) hypothesis, looking for contemporaneous fire as evidenced by charcoal in lake sediments (non-anthropogenic sites) dated to 12,900 BP as corroboration of this event. Four lakes near the Gainey archaeological site (featured in the Firestone paper) were cored in February 2008 near Flint, Michigan.

The results show that there was contemporaneous fire, not just at 12,900 cal years BP but several times prior (14,500 to 12,900 Cal bp years).
This is interpreted to mean that some large-scale natural cause(s) triggered
these fires. There is not a unique spike at 12,900 Cal bp years.

Two of the four lakes show continued fires into the Holocene, and two show a drop in fires (very low charcoal counts).
This suggests that PaleoAmerican, thought to have entered the area around 12,000 years ago, may have been responsible for the fires at the two lakes, Swift and Slack, that are less than a km from the Gainey site. The two lakes with the low Holocene charcoal counts, Sixteen and Big Fish are 30 and 16 km from the Gainey site, respectively.

A natural progression of this research would be to sample more lakes across a larger region of the Midwest from LGM* through Holocene time for fire evidence. Another important issue to address for this work is to evaluate changes in moisture regimes by assessing lake level change across this time interval, by coring transects across a lake.

I am an interdisciplinary researcher and my main areas of interest are the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna and ecological and climate changes since the LGM.

* LGM is Last Glacial Maximum, a time when the Laurentide Ice Sheet was at its maximum extent, around 20,000 years ago.

updated August 2009

Education

A.A.S. , Purdue University,, West Lafayette, IN, 1978 (Industrial Illustration Technology).

B.A., Indiana University, New Albany, IN, 2007 (Geoscience).

Master's Candidate, 2nd year, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 2009 (Geology).

Research Support

Limnological Research Center LacCore. $1,000. Funded 06-2008 to 06-2008.

Geological Society of America. $2060. Funded 03-2008 to 06-2009.

University of Cincinnati Department of Geology. Funded 09-2008 to 06-2009.

Published Abstracts

Ballard, J. P., & Bijkerk, A. K. (09-2005). The Megafauna Extinction and the Clathrate Gun, Non calor sed umor? [Abstract]. 2nd International World of Elephants Short Papers and Abstracts, 16 - 17.

Invited Presentations

Ballard, Joanne P. (05-2007). The far-reaching effects of weather on populations, superstitions, and culture of the Northern Renaissance in Europe as depicted in Art, 1350-1575 A.D.. Indiana University SE Undergraduate Conference, New Albany, Indiana.

Ballard, Joanne P. (05-2007). Ice Ages in North America. Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, Indiana.

Poster Presentations

Ballard, Joanne P., & Lowell, Thomas V. (04/03/2009). A Lateglacial Paleofire Record for east-central Michigan focusing on the Gainey archaeological site. Geological Society America North Central, Rockford, Illinois.

Honors & Awards

Outstanding Geoscience Student,

Indiana University Southeast Department of Geosciences.

Graduate Teaching Award (for teaching lower level courses),

University of Cincinnati Department of Geology.

Other Experience and Professional Memberships

06/10/2008-06/20/2008,

Limnological Research Center Visit,

University of Minnesota, <p>Minneapolis, MN.

09/07/2008-09/15/2008,

Paleoecology Lab of Dr. Cathy Whitlock,

Montana State University, <p>Bozeman, MT.

08/01/2008-08/15/2008,

Glacial Field Methods Class - Dr. Thomas Lowell,

University of Cincinnati Geology Department field work, <p>Iceland.

Courses Taught

Department of Geology
P.O. Box 210013
Cincinnati OH 45221-0013

345 College Court, Cincinnati OH 45221-0013