Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard
One of four marine cores of glacial sediments collected from a water depth of about 1200 m at Vestnesa Ridge (west of Svalbard) contained small fragments of coal, charcoal and moss. This material was restricted to a single level, and 14C dating of bivalves both above and below indicates an age of c....
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Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27573 https://doi.org/10.18261/let.55.4.6 |
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ftunivtroemsoe:oai:munin.uit.no:10037/27573 2023-05-15T13:25:36+02:00 Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard Hanken, Nils-Martin Sztybor, Kamila Høeg, Helge I. Karlsen, Dag Arild Rasmussen, Tine Lander Abay, Tesfamariam Berhane 2022-11-23 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27573 https://doi.org/10.18261/let.55.4.6 eng eng Universitetsforlaget Lethaia: An International Journal of Palaeontology and Stratigraphy Hanken, Sztybor, Høeg, Karlsen, Rasmussen, Abay. Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard. Lethaia: An International Journal of Palaeontology and Stratigraphy. 2022 FRIDAID 2079501 doi:10.18261/let.55.4.6 0024-1164 1502-3931 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27573 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) openAccess Copyright 2022 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Journal article Tidsskriftartikkel Peer reviewed publishedVersion 2022 ftunivtroemsoe https://doi.org/10.18261/let.55.4.6 2022-12-01T00:02:25Z One of four marine cores of glacial sediments collected from a water depth of about 1200 m at Vestnesa Ridge (west of Svalbard) contained small fragments of coal, charcoal and moss. This material was restricted to a single level, and 14C dating of bivalves both above and below indicates an age of c. 18.0–15.5 kyr BP. Chemical analyses of the coal indicate that the provenance area was from the northern part of Andøya, North Norway. The moss fragment was identified as Aulacomnium turgidum, which is a well-known species from the northern part of Andøya, which was an ice-free refugium with tundra vegetation during the Weichselian maximum. One small piece of charcoal with reasonably well-preserved cell structures is derived from burnt Salix sp. These findings are important, because they demonstrate the presence of drift ice carrying organic material from the northern part of Andøya towards the west coast of Svalbard during Heinrich event H1, an event of extensive ice-rafting in the Nordic seas. This also implies that some components of the vascular plant communities growing on Svalbard today, might originally have been imported as seeds floating on sea ice, before stranding along the coast of Svalbard. The plant colonization of Svalbard can thus have started already during Heinrich event H1. The finding of charcoal can only be explained by a fire due to lightning and not by campfire, because the first human population arrived in northern Norway at a much later time (probably during Preboreal). The charcoal is thus from the oldest known wild fire in Norway. Article in Journal/Newspaper Andøya Fram Strait Nordic Seas North Norway Northern Norway Sea ice Svalbard Tundra University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive Svalbard Norway Andøya ENVELOPE(13.982,13.982,68.185,68.185) Lethaia 55 4 1 13 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive |
op_collection_id |
ftunivtroemsoe |
language |
English |
description |
One of four marine cores of glacial sediments collected from a water depth of about 1200 m at Vestnesa Ridge (west of Svalbard) contained small fragments of coal, charcoal and moss. This material was restricted to a single level, and 14C dating of bivalves both above and below indicates an age of c. 18.0–15.5 kyr BP. Chemical analyses of the coal indicate that the provenance area was from the northern part of Andøya, North Norway. The moss fragment was identified as Aulacomnium turgidum, which is a well-known species from the northern part of Andøya, which was an ice-free refugium with tundra vegetation during the Weichselian maximum. One small piece of charcoal with reasonably well-preserved cell structures is derived from burnt Salix sp. These findings are important, because they demonstrate the presence of drift ice carrying organic material from the northern part of Andøya towards the west coast of Svalbard during Heinrich event H1, an event of extensive ice-rafting in the Nordic seas. This also implies that some components of the vascular plant communities growing on Svalbard today, might originally have been imported as seeds floating on sea ice, before stranding along the coast of Svalbard. The plant colonization of Svalbard can thus have started already during Heinrich event H1. The finding of charcoal can only be explained by a fire due to lightning and not by campfire, because the first human population arrived in northern Norway at a much later time (probably during Preboreal). The charcoal is thus from the oldest known wild fire in Norway. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Hanken, Nils-Martin Sztybor, Kamila Høeg, Helge I. Karlsen, Dag Arild Rasmussen, Tine Lander Abay, Tesfamariam Berhane |
spellingShingle |
Hanken, Nils-Martin Sztybor, Kamila Høeg, Helge I. Karlsen, Dag Arild Rasmussen, Tine Lander Abay, Tesfamariam Berhane Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
author_facet |
Hanken, Nils-Martin Sztybor, Kamila Høeg, Helge I. Karlsen, Dag Arild Rasmussen, Tine Lander Abay, Tesfamariam Berhane |
author_sort |
Hanken, Nils-Martin |
title |
Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
title_short |
Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
title_full |
Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
title_fullStr |
Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
title_full_unstemmed |
Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard |
title_sort |
late quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at vestnesa ridge, fram strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at svalbard |
publisher |
Universitetsforlaget |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27573 https://doi.org/10.18261/let.55.4.6 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(13.982,13.982,68.185,68.185) |
geographic |
Svalbard Norway Andøya |
geographic_facet |
Svalbard Norway Andøya |
genre |
Andøya Fram Strait Nordic Seas North Norway Northern Norway Sea ice Svalbard Tundra |
genre_facet |
Andøya Fram Strait Nordic Seas North Norway Northern Norway Sea ice Svalbard Tundra |
op_relation |
Lethaia: An International Journal of Palaeontology and Stratigraphy Hanken, Sztybor, Høeg, Karlsen, Rasmussen, Abay. Late Quaternary terrigenous plant and coaly fragments found at Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait: implications for postglacial plant colonization at Svalbard. Lethaia: An International Journal of Palaeontology and Stratigraphy. 2022 FRIDAID 2079501 doi:10.18261/let.55.4.6 0024-1164 1502-3931 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/27573 |
op_rights |
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) openAccess Copyright 2022 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.18261/let.55.4.6 |
container_title |
Lethaia |
container_volume |
55 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
1 |
op_container_end_page |
13 |
_version_ |
1766386503959707648 |