Yedoma: Late Pleistocene ice-rich syngenetic permafrost of Beringia

• Main Authors: Schirrmeister, Lutz, Froese, D., Tumskoy, V., Grosse, Guido, Wetterich, Sebastian
• Other Authors: Elias, Scott A., Mock, Cary J., Murton, Julian
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2013
• Subjects: Ice; permafrost; Alaska; Beringia; Siberia
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/24082/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/24082/2/Yedoma-Encyclopedia.pdf; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444536433001060; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.43686; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.43686.d002

Syngenetically frozen deposits that are fine-grained and ice-rich are widely distributed in lowlands of northeastern Siberia, Alaska and northwestern Canada. These late Pleistocene sediments are specific to this region summarized as Beringia, and have been termed 'Ice Complex' or 'Yedoma' in Siberia, and 'muck' in North America. Silt is their dominant material, but they also include abundant organic matter preserved in permafrost since the time of deposition. Vegetation and faunal reconstructions indicate that the sediments aggraded largely under a cryoxeric environment characterized by graminoid and forb-rich vegetation that supported a grazing megafauna population during the Pleistocene.