Late Weichselian and Holocene sedimentary palaeoenvironment and glacial activity in the high-arctic van Keulenfjorden, Spitsbergen

• Published in: The Holocene
• Main Authors: Kempf, Philipp, Forwick, Matthias, Laberg, Jan Sverre, Vorren, Tore O
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Earth and Environmental Sciences; late Weichselian-Holocene; sedimentary environment; glacial surge; fjord; deglaciation; Arctic; Svalbard; PUSH-MORAINES; SEA-ICE SHEET; BARENTS SEA; SUBMARINE LANDFORMS; SVALBARD MARGIN; NORTH-ATLANTIC; ISFJORDEN; MARINE; FJORDS; SURGE; Barents Sea; Van Keulenfjorden; Nathorstbreen; glacier; Ice Sheet; Isfjord*; Isfjorden; North Atlantic; Sea ice; Svalbard margin; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/4181341; http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-4181341; https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683613499055; https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/4181341/file/4181352

High-arctic fjords, for example, van Keulenfjorden on Spitsbergen, provide valuable palaeoenvironmental archives as they typically contain landforms and sediment sequences that document past changes in glacial activity with high temporal resolution. Van Keulenfjorden was covered with a grounded glacier during the last glacial, and it was deglaciated between c. 11.8 and 11.3 cal. ka BP. The retreat of the ice front accelerated from approximately 80 to 190 m/a during the deglaciation. The maximum late Holocene glacier extent occurred after surge-like advances of the glacier Nathorstbreen between 2790 and 2610 cal. yr BP (i.e. during a period with the coldest climatic conditions on Svalbard). This maximum extent was reached approximately 2600 years earlier than inferred for most fjords on Svalbard, suggesting that surge-like glacier advances on Svalbard can occur under variable climatic conditions. The time interval between the advances of Nathorstbreen around 2.7 ka BP was approximately 100–150 years. This is comparable to the last and only historically known quiescent phase of Nathorstbreen of c. 120 years between the late 19th century and the most recent surge from 2003 to 2012.