Discovery of a hypersaline subglacial lake complex beneath Devon Ice Cap, Canadian Arctic. ...

• Main Authors: Rutishauser, Anja, Blankenship, Donald D, Sharp, Martin, Skidmore, Mark L, Greenbaum, Jamin S, Grima, Cyril, Schroeder, Dustin M, Dowdeswell, Julian A, Young, Duncan A
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2018
• Subjects: 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; Arctic; Devon Ice Cap; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.26064; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/278707

Subglacial lakes are unique environments that, despite the extreme dark and cold conditions, have been shown to host microbial life. Many subglacial lakes have been discovered beneath the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, but no spatially isolated water body has been documented as hypersaline. We use radio-echo sounding measurements to identify two subglacial lakes situated in bedrock troughs near the ice divide of Devon Ice Cap, Canadian Arctic. Modeled basal ice temperatures in the lake area are no higher than -10.5°C, suggesting that these lakes consist of hypersaline water. This implication of hypersalinity is in agreement with the surrounding geology, which indicates that the subglacial lakes are situated within an evaporite-rich sediment unit containing a bedded salt sequence, which likely act as the solute source for the brine. Our results reveal the first evidence for subglacial lakes in the Canadian Arctic and the first hypersaline subglacial lakes reported to date. We conclude that these ...