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

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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.