Biological and geochemical proxies in sediment cores reveal shifts in marine predator population dynamics relative to historic anthropogenic exploitation and recent climate change at South Georgia Island sub-Antarctic

Kristan, Allyson K.; Maiti, Kanchan; McMahon, Kelton W.; Dance, Michael A.; Polito, Michael J.

doi:10.1007/s00300-022-03067-8

Cited by 1 publication

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“…The scarcity of landmasses in the subantarctic makes South Georgia and the surrounding shelf (the focus of this study) a prime site to better understand the drivers and impacts of post-deglacial climate change in the subantarctic region (Berg et al, 2019). There are a number of Holocene records documenting South Georgia's past climate from lake and peat cores (Clapperton et al, 1989;van der Putten et al, 2004;Xia et al, 2020;Zwier et al, 2021;van der Bilt et al, 2022) and marine (Graham et al, 2017;Kristan et al, 2022;Lešić et al, 2022) and coastal (Berg et al, 2019) sediment cores. Although marine records provide palaeoceanographic information on the latest Holocene (Kristan et al, 2022), there are so far no continuous early-and mid-Holocene palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from South Georgia shelf records.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

South Georgia marine productivity over the past 15 ka and implications for glacial evolution

Wilkin,

Kender,

Dejardin

et al. 2024

J. Micropalaeontol.

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Abstract. The subantarctic islands of South Georgia are located in the Southern Ocean, and they may be sensitive to future climate warming. However, due to a lack of well-dated subantarctic palaeoclimate archives, there is still uncertainty about South Georgia's response to past climate change. Here, we reconstruct primary productivity changes and infer Holocene glacial evolution by analysing two marine gravity cores: one near Cumberland Bay on the inner South Georgia shelf (GC673: ca. 9.5 to 0.3 cal. kyr BP) and one offshore of Royal Bay on the mid-shelf (GC666: ca. 15.2 cal. kyr BP to present). We identify three distinct benthic foraminiferal assemblages characterised by the dominance of Miliammina earlandi, Fursenkoina fusiformis, and Cassidulinoides parkerianus that are considered alongside foraminiferal stable isotopes and the organic carbon and biogenic silica accumulation rates of the host sediment. The M. earlandi assemblage is prevalent during intervals of dissolution in GC666 and reduced productivity in GC673. The F. fusiformis assemblage coincides with enhanced productivity in both cores. Our multiproxy analysis provides evidence that the latest Pleistocene to earliest Holocene (ca. 15.2 to 10.5 cal. kyr BP) was a period of high productivity associated with increased glacial meltwater discharge. The mid–late Holocene (ca. 8 to 1 cal. kyr BP), coinciding with a fall in sedimentation rates and lower productivity, was likely a period of reduced glacial extent but with several short-lived episodes of increased productivity from minor glacial readvances. The latest Holocene (from ca. 1 cal. kyr BP) saw an increase in productivity and glacial advance associated with cooling temperatures and increased precipitation which may have been influenced by changes in the southwesterly winds over South Georgia. We interpret the elevated relative abundance of F. fusiformis as a proxy for increased primary productivity which, at proximal site GC673, was forced by terrestrial runoff associated with the spring–summer melting of glaciers in Cumberland Bay. Our study refines the glacial history of South Georgia and provides a more complete record of mid–late Holocene glacial readvances with robust chronology. Our results suggest that South Georgia glaciers were sensitive to modest climate changes within the Holocene.

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