Severnaya Zemlya, Arctic Russia: a nucleation area for Kara Sea ice sheets during the Middle to Late Quaternary

Abstract

Quaternary glacial stratigraphy and relative sea-level changes reveal at least four expansions of the Kara Sea ice sheet over the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago at 791N in the Russian Arctic, as indicated from tills interbedded with marine sediments, exposed in stratigraphic superposition, and from raised-beach sequences that occur at altitudes up to 140 m a.s.l. Chronologic control is provided by AMS 14 C, electron-spin resonance, green-stimulated luminescence, and aspartic-acid geochronology. Major glaciations followed by deglaciation and marine inundation occurred during MIS 10-9, MIS 8-7, MIS 6-5e and MIS 5d-3. The MIS 6-5e event, associated with the high marine limit, implies ice-sheet thickness of 42000 m only 200 km from the deep Arctic Ocean, consistent with published evidence of ice grounding at $1000 m water depth in the central Arctic Ocean. Till fabrics and glacial tectonics record repeated expansions of local ice caps exclusively, suggesting wet-based ice cap advance followed by cold-based regional ice-sheet expansion. Local ice caps over highland sites along the perimeter of the shallow Kara Sea, including the Byrranga Mountains, appear to have repeatedly fostered initiation of a large Kara Sea ice sheet, with exception of the Last Glacial Maximum (MIS 2), when Kara Sea ice did not impact Severnaya Zemlya and barely graced northernmost Taymyr Peninsula. r

200 ka of glacial events in NW Svalbard: an emergence cycle facies model and regional correlations

“…4, 19), similar to many other coastal stratigraphic sites in the Arctic [e.g. 6,73]. The depositional processes at Kongsfjordhallet range from suspension settling and mass movements in lower energy (deeper) settings, to wave reworking in higher energy (shallower) environments.…”

Early Holocene environments on October Revolution Island, Severnaya Zemlya,Arctic Russia

“…growing season temperature). We present new palaeoenvironmental data based on five disjunct b1 m thick peaty and silty sections, all but one of which were described and sampled on southwestern October Revolution Island, close to the present Vavilov Ice-Cap margin, during a joint Swedish-American-Russian expedition in 2002 (see Möller et al, 2007). The fifth section, located on Bolshevik Island, was previously studied by Raab (2003) and we have added new data to this record.…”

“…Although recent palaeoenvironmental studies on the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago have revealed a long and complex history of glaciations and associated sea-level changes from the middle to the late Pleistocene (Bolshiyanov and Makeyev, 1995;Andreev et., al., 1997a;Raab et al, 2003;Möller et al, 2007), relatively little is known about environmental changes during and after the Pleistocene/ Holocene transition (ca. 11,500 cal.…”

“…Andreev et al / Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 267 (2008) 21-30 Makeyev, 1995. The geomorphology of the non-glaciated areas is characterized by broad valleys and extensive flat lowlands below 100 m a.s.l., dissected by a number of river valleys and ravines of which the largest are those of the rivers draining the Vavilov and Karpinskiy Ice Caps (Möller et al, 2007). The studied peat and silt profiles were collected from banks of small streams eroded into the flat lowlands along the Vavilov Ice Cap and in the Ozernaya River valley.…”

Spatial and temporal Arctic Ocean depositional regimes: a key to the evolution of ice drift and current patterns

“…Whether or not this increase in coarse fraction abundance on the Lomonosov Ridge is solely caused by the BarentsKara ice sheet remains an open question. A reconstruction of the Kara ice sheet indicates that there have been major glacial events during at least two earlier Pleistocene glaciations (Möller et al, 2006), which challenges arguments for a local origin of the grain size shift at MIS 6/7 on the Lomonosov Ridge.…”