Quaternary Environments and Climate Change in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, Constructed from Sediment Cores

Gifford H. Miller    gmiller@colorado.edu (Principal Investigator current)
John T. Andrews (Co-Principal Investigator current)
                    
Abstract    

     This award is in support of one element of the PALE activity
     (Paleoclimates from Arctic Lakes and Estuaries).  Research is focused on a lake
     coring program in the Eastern Canadian Arctic with the goal of recovering
     continuous records of environmental change for the last 10 to 15 thousand
     years.  Baffin Island lies in a key location and analyses of climatic data
     indicate that this region serves as a bellwether for the circum-arctic climate
     system.   This project will reconstruct past climates from down- core changes
     in the pollen and diatom assemblages, stable isotopic ratios and physical
     characteristic of the sediment in cores. The lakes will be strategically
     located along a N/S temperature transect, and across the E/W marine/continental
     climate gradient.  Cores form these lakes will allow examination of  questions
     related to climate change, including regional glacial history (timing and
     extent of the last continental ice advance and the pattern of deglaciation),
     sea level change (both postglacial emergence and the more recent submergence),
     and renewed development of cirque and mountain glaciers in the late Holocene
     (Neoglaciation).  Sampling will be undertaken with a density commensurate with
     PALE objectives, i.e. decadal to centuries resolution depending on the
     accumulation rates within the different lake basins.