Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change

Abstract

High Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous livelihoods are tightly linked and exposed to climate change, yet assessing their sensitivity requires a long-term perspective. Here, we assess the vulnerability of the North Water polynya, a unique seaice ecosystem that sustains the world’s northernmost Inuit communities and several keystone Arctic species. We reconstruct mid-to-late Holocene changes in sea ice, marine primary production, and little auk colony dynamics through multi-proxy analysis of marine and lake sediment cores. Our results suggest a productive ecosystem by 4400–4200 cal yrs b2k coincident with the arrival of the first humans in Greenland. Climate forcing during the late Holocene, leading to periods of polynya instability and marine productivity decline, is strikingly coeval with the human abandonment of Greenland from c. 2200–1200 cal yrs b2k. Our long-term perspective highlights the future decline of the North Water ecosystem, due to climate warming and changing sea-ice conditions, as an important climate change risk.

Reconstructing Long-Term Changes in Avian Populations Using Lake Sediments: Opening a Window Onto the Past

“…Changes in sedimentary δ 15 N values have been used to successfully track bird colony sizes in Arctic (Michelutti et al, 2009;Yuan et al, 2010;Keatley et al, 2011;MacDonald et al, 2015;Davidson et al, 2018;Hargan et al, 2019;Ribeiro et al, 2021), Antarctic (Huang et al, 2014(Huang et al, , 2016Gao et al, 2018c;Yang et al, 2018), temperate (Stewart et al, 2015(Stewart et al, , 2019Hargan et al, 2018;Duda et al, 2020a,c), and tropical (Conroy et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2017aWu et al, , 2018 systems. Although this method is effective, Nie et al (2014b) suggested an improvement on δ 15 N as 15 N, which is calculated as the difference between acid-treated and untreated δ 15 N. The authors highlight that 15 N can track ornithogenic signals more effectively than δ 15 N in cold and arid environments that are subject to strong post-depositional processes such as guano deposition and ammonia-volatilization.…”

Impact of freshwater runoff from the southwest Greenland Ice Sheet on fjord productivity since the late 19th century

“…Ribeiro et al, 2017;Limoges et al, 2018;Kumar et al, 2016;Detlef et al, 2021). Similarly, high values have been observed on the northwest Greenland shelf during the Holocene when climate conditions were favourable for high primary production (Limoges et al, 2020;Saini et al, 2020;Ribeiro et al, 2021). The modern fjord hydrography in Nuup Kangerlua has been shown to maintain productivity also in the outer fjord, as biomass and nutrients are partly advected from the inner fjord by currents and wind and tidal mixing, which, together with the warm, nutrient-rich waters carried by the WGC, can increase seasonal productivity (Juul-Pedersen et al, 2015).…”

Lateglacial and Holocene sedimentary dynamics in northwestern Baffin Bay as recorded in sediment cores from Cape Norton Shaw Inlet (Nunavut, Canada)

“…2020; Ribeiro et al . 2021; Koerner et al 2021) by adopting a multiproxy approach (physical properties, thin sections, grain size, quantitative mineralogy, pXRF) to provide an improved quantification of the sediment provenance and transport pathways in northwestern Baffin Bay since the last deglaciation, and their connection to regional climate history. This study provides more information about the long‐term development of the NOW, which is the largest and most productive polynya in the northern hemisphere on which local communities depend (e.g.…”