| Summary: | The Espenberg maar lakes on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska, are the largest volcanic crater lakes in the world and contain the longest known lacustrine sedimentary archives in Alaska. The lack of glacial-aged marine sedimentary archives around the Bering Land Bridge due to exposure of the shelf during sea level low-stands makes these lakes highly valuable for understanding the region’s past climate and environmental changes. Located en route to humanity’s last colonized American continents, the Seward Peninsula’s climate and environments during the last glacial period bear major anthropological significance. However, a lack of quantitative proxies has so far hampered exploration of these lakes for paleoclimate reconstructions. Here we report, for the first time, the discovery of abundant Group I alkenones and Isochrysidales in surface sediments from three maar lakes: White Fish, North Killeak and Devil Mountain, using a combination of lipid biomarker and 18S rRNA gene sequencing analyses. Our discovery adds to the expanding list of oligotrophic freshwater lakes where Group I alkenones are found, and water chemistry data contribute to the understanding of the environmental controls on Group I Isochrysidales. Our results further confirm the use of the U k 37 index of Group I alkenones as a proxy for the mean temperature of the spring isotherm (MTSI) and RIK37 as a quantitative measurement for Isochrysidales group mixing. We also demonstrate the analytical challenges for analyzing alkenones in freshwater lakes and the effectiveness of eliminating coelution using silver thiolate chromatographic material (AgTCM).
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