Postglacial environmental succession of Nettilling Lake (Baffin Island, Canadian Arctic) inferred from biogeochemical and microfossil proxies

Nettilling Lake (Baffin Island, Nunavut) is currently the largest lake in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Despite its enormous size, this freshwater system remains little studied until the present-day. Existing records from southern Baffin Island indicate that in the early postglacial" period,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quaternary Science Reviews
Main Authors: Narancic, Biljana, Pienitz, Reinhard, Chapligin, Bernhard, Meyer, Hanno, Francus, Pierre, Guilbault, Jean-Pierre
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Earth and Environmental Sciences
OXYGEN-ISOTOPE RECORD
DIATOM SILICA
SEA-ICE
CLIMATE
SEDIMENTS
LAURENTIDE
DELTA-O-18
HISTORY
MAXIMUM
BASIN
Multi-proxy study
Postglacial reconstruction
Arctic
Marine/lacustrine
transition
Sediment cores
XRF
Diatoms
Oxygen isotope
Baffin Island
Canadian Arctic Archipelago
Foxe Basin
Nettilling Lake
Nunavut
Arctic Archipelago
Baffin
Ice Sheet
Sea ice
Online Access:https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8761147
http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8761147
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.022
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8761147/file/8761148
Description
Summary:Nettilling Lake (Baffin Island, Nunavut) is currently the largest lake in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Despite its enormous size, this freshwater system remains little studied until the present-day. Existing records from southern Baffin Island indicate that in the early postglacial" period, the region was submerged by the postglacial Tyrell Sea due to isostatic depression previously exerted by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. However, these records are temporally and spatially discontinuous, relying on qualitative extrapolation. This paper presents the first quantitative reconstruction of the postglacial environmental succession of the Nettilling Lake basin based on a 8300 yr-long high resolution sedimentary record. Our multi-proxy investigation of the glacio-isostatic uplift and subsequent changes in paleosalinity and sediment sources is based on analyses of sediment fabric, elemental geochemistry (mu-XRF), diatom assemblage composition, as well as on the first diatom-based oxygen isotope record from the eastern Canadian Arctic. Results indicate that the Nettilling Lake basin experienced a relatively rapid and uniform marine invasion in the early Holocene, followed by progressive freshening until about 6000 yr BP when limnological conditions similar to those of today were established. Our findings present evidence for deglacial processes in the Foxe Basin that were initiated at least 400yrs earlier than previously thought. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.orgilicensesiby-nc-nd/4.0/).

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