While the changes in source area are subtle, they appear to suggest a switch from the Antarctic Peninsula area to the Ross Embayment. It is surrounded by young montane rain forest that has regenerated since Hurricanes David and Allen in 1979 and 1980. The lake sits in a moat between the eastern rim of a 2 km wide volcanic crater and a massive dacite dome that rises 470 m above the lake. In this seismically active area, it is likely that an earthquake initiated the andslide that blocked the drainage. Several major non-cyclic peaks of LOI and total plant debris display also occur.
More recent peaks correlate with documented historic hurricanes.
This approach has considerable potential for chronicling prehistoric hurricanes. These rain forests have undergone frequent disturbances, maintaining an abundance of early successional species. Starting in 1961, a series of power dams and diversion to the lake of runoff from an adjacent catchment have raised lake level and increased inflow. Analyses of this sediment and soil cores from the catchment indicate extreme high inventories of 210Pb, commensurate with the extremely high rainfall. Recent studies have confirmed the temporal association of Tulane pine peaks with Heinrich layers deposited by late-Quaternary ice rafting in the northern North Atlantic.