Pleistocene stratigraphy and paleoenvironment on the Yermak Plateau, Arctic Ocean: New results from a multi-proxy study on ODP Hole 910A

• Main Authors: Matthießen, Jens, Knies, J., Mackensen, Andreas, Nam, S., Stein, Rüdiger, Vogt, C.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Svalbard; Yermak Plateau; Nordic Seas; North Atlantic; Sea ice; Yermak plateau
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/10347/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.20832

In 1993, the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 151 drilled at 7 sites in the Nordic Seas and the adjacent Arctic Ocean to study the Cenozoic paleoceanography and paleoclimate evolution (Myhre et al. 1995). On Yermak Plateau, the northernmost ODP sites to date were drilled and more than 1200 meters of glacial marine sediments of Pleistocene and Pliocene age were obtained in 10 holes (Myhre et al. 1995). Two shallow water drill holes from sites 910 and 911 that are today located in the path of relatively warm North Atlantic waters transported in the Svalbard branch of the Westspitsbergen Current into the Arctic Ocean were selected for a detailed study. Magnetostratigraphic, stable isotope and biostratigraphic age control suggests that Holes 910A and 911A provide an almost complete stratigraphic record of the last 3.5 Ma (Myhre et al. 1996). In particular, Hole 910A is unique compared to other Quaternary marine sequences from the Arctic Ocean because of a relatively well-constrained stable oxygen and carbon isotope stratigraphy for the last 650.000 years (Flower 1997). Therefore, Holes 910A and 911A are important sites to improve the Plio-/Pleistocene chronostratigraphy of the Eastern Arctic Ocean, and to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental history in the past 3.5 Ma. Furthermore, these holes may form stratigraphic reference sections for new holes to be drilled in the Central Arctic Ocean in the frame of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).A multi-proxy study was started in summer 2003 to establish a dinoflagellate cyst stratigraphy for Plio-/Pleistocene sediments of the eastern Arctic Ocean that will be calibrated versus a revised stable oxygen isotope stratigraphy. Furthermore, the variability of sea-surface conditions and its interaction with the discharge of freshwater from Eurasia and the growth and decay of the northern Barents Sea ice sheets since the Pliocene will be reconstructed. Various micropaleontological, sedimentological and organic geochemical methods are applied on the same sample set to ...