Tracing the origin of Arctic driftwood ...

• Main Authors: Hellmann, Lena, Tegel, Willy, Eggertsson, Ólafur, Schweingruber, Fritz Hans, Blanchette, Robert, Kirdyanov, Alexander, Gärtner, Holger, Büntgen, Ulf
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2013
• Subjects: 910 Geography & travel; Arctic; Svalbard; Greenland; East Greenland; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.49682; https://boris.unibe.ch/49682/

Arctic environments, where surface temperatures increase and sea ice cover and permafrost depth decrease, are very sensitive to even slight climatic variations. Placing recent environmental change of the high-northern latitudes in a long-term context is, however, complicated by too short meteorological observations and too few proxy records. Driftwood may represent a unique cross-disciplinary archive at the interface of marine and terrestrial processes. Here, we introduce 1445 driftwood remains from coastal East Greenland and Svalbard. Macroscopy and microscopy were applied for wood anatomical classification; a multi-species subset was used for detecting fungi; and information on boreal vegetation patterns, circumpolar river systems, and ocean current dynamics was reviewed and evaluated. Four conifer (Pinus, Larix, Picea, and Abies) and three deciduous (Populus, Salix, and Betula) genera were differentiated. Species-specific identification also separated Pinus sylvestris and Pinus sibirica, which account for ...