A Holocene record of tephra deposition from lake Kirkjuvatn, Faroe Islands

• Main Author: Moller, Lindsay
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: W&M ScholarWorks 2021
• Subjects: Geology; Faroe Islands; Saksunarvatn; Kirkjuvatn
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/geologyseniors/13; https://scholarworks.wm.edu/context/geologyseniors/article/1015/viewcontent/LMoller_FinalThesis.pdf

Radiocarbon dating of lake sediment records can be challenging the Faroe Islands due to remobilization of old carbon in the catchments, therefore other dating methods are needed to create accurate chronologies. Preliminary radiocarbon dating of a sediment core from Lake Kirkjuvatn shows a rapid increase in the rate of sedimentation c. 1,500 years BP that could possibly be linked to human settlement with further analysis. In order to improve the chronology of this lake sediment core, sediment samples were collected and processed using sieving and density separation methods to identify tephra. Sic intervals were sampled for tephra based on anomalies in XFR and CT scans. Two intervals were identified to contain tephra The tephra that were found, were then identified using geochemical analysis compared to known tephra values. These tephra corresponded with the c. 10,250 years BP Saksunarvatn and c. 4,300 years BP Hekla 4. The identified tephra from this study improved the chronology of the core, indicating that the sampled sections were up to 500 years older than originally identified with radiocarbon dating.