Description: The results of seismic studies in the shallow waters of the southwestern Kara Sea show the presence of a seismic unit that can be interpreted as relict submarine permafrost. The permafrost table has a strongly dissected upper surface and is located at a water depth of 5–10 m. A 3D modeling of the permafrost table suggests the presence of relict buried thermodenudational depressions (up to 2 km across) at a water depth of 5–10 m. The depressions may be considered to be paragenetic to thermocirques found at the Shpindler site. Relict thermocirques are completely filled with sediment and not exposed at the sediment surface.

Description: Empirical data as well as modelling experiments show that the stability of the Arctic cryosphere is today under threat due to global warming. Along the circum-arctic ocean periphery this cryosphere is comprised of terrestrial permafrost. However, during Quaternary times this frozen landscape was repeatedly changed due to global sea-level fluctuations which particularly affected the wide and shallow Siberian shelves. As western part of the Beringian landmass the entire Laptev Sea shelf was subaerially exposed in last glacial times. During the ensuing postglacial global sea-level rise this region gradually changed from a terrestrial permafrost landscape into a shallow marine shelf environment. Various geochemical, micropaleontological, palynological, and sedimentological data obtained from both conventional gravity cores and drill cores reveal the strong influence of this tranformation process on the shelf environment. Our previous scientific drilling campaign (2000), conducted to the outer Laptev Sea shelf with the goal to recover pre-Holocene sediments from acoustically transparent sections, confirmed the existence of frozen, and ice-bearing terrestrial sediments below a soft, marine sediment package of Holocene age. However, oxygen isotope composition of the ice unveiled that these frozen sediments must have been altered by re-freezing processes during and after the transgression. This assumption seems now corroborated by new high-resolution acoustic data from the mid- to inner shelf region gained during the latest expeditions in 2004. Although the overall scenario of shelf transformation for the time since the last sea level rise seems to be reasonably well understood now, there is no information available so far from older climatic intervals with conditions comparable to the Holocene. But such information from Holocene-like climate intervals will contribute useful insight for predictive purposes, since these records would then provide a longer time frame within which to evaluate natural variability in general, and means to examine the response of the Arctic system to future changes in particular. The Laptev shelf seas is a crucial area for such paleo-evaluation studies due to its highly changeable environment, both seasonally as well as on longer timescales (decadal to millennial to glacial-interglacial).

Description: In the past few years sampling of deepwater seabed gained an increasingly important role in studying geological structure of the Arctic Ocean. A common concept of virtually uninterrupted pelagic drape in the Amerasia Basin and exclusively ice-rafted nature of all clastic components that occur in bottom sediments was challenged by recent discoveries of bedrock exposures in the sea floor, while correlation of results of analytical study of bottom samples collected by the Russian expeditions in 2000, 2005 and 2007 with bathymetric environments at respective sites suggested that certain dredged and cored coarse rock fragments appeared meaningful for bedrock characterization if even the source sub-pelagic outcrop was not positively documented. The first results of age determinations of detrital zircons that were extracted from coarse fragments of lithic sedimentary rocks resting on the seabed and in the immediate sub-bottom, as well as of zircons from fragments of magmatic/metamorphic rocks and of zircon grains separated directly from sub-pelagic unlithified sediments are in agreement with published interpretations of the Lomonosov Ridge bedrock as composed of Mesozoic terrigenous sequences; the presence of an older Neoproterozoic(?) – Early-Middle Paleozoic basement is also possible. The Mendeleev Rise bedrock, too, is believed to mainly consist of Paleozoic-Early(?) Mesozoic sedimentary superstructure that may locally rest on the Earliest Paleozoic or even older units. Basaltic rocks likely to originate from the High Arctic Large Igneous Province (HALIP) has not so far been found among the collected fragments but limited loose zircon grains probably derived from broadly contemporaneous magmatic products were recorded in sub-pelagic sediment along with dropstones of variably metamorphosed Precambrian mafic and granitoid rocks. INTRODUCTION Great progress in acquisition of new bathymet-ric and geophysical data relevant to understanding the geological structure and history of the Arctic Ocean, including the tectonic nature of enigmatic Central-Arctic bathymetric highs, was achieved in recent years by the Arctic countries through their programs for delineation of respective extended continental shelves. However, only limited direct geological information was obtained on the compo-sition of sub-bottom bedrock concealed by almost continuous drape of young sediments. Only at a few sites can the lithic fragments recovered by bottom sampling be interpreted with sufficient confidence as representing in situ submarine bedrock, while in most cases they are regarded ice rafted debris (IRD) of questionable derivation. In search of provenance of lithic and mineral clastic components in bottom sediments we conducted age determinations on zircon crystals of two categories: (1) extracted from the rock fragments and (2) separated directly from hemipelagic sediments. In this paper we present the results of more than 700 zircon U-Pb age measurements completed before 2012. The samples labeled AF00, AF05, AF07 were collected during MS " Akademik Fedorov " cruises Arctic-2000, 2005, 2007, those marked ALR07 were acquired in 2007 on board NIB (nuclear icebreaker) " Rossiya " , and two specimens designated BC were selected for the analysis from clastic material sampled by RV " Polarstern " in the course of ARK-XXIII/3-2008 cruise.

Description: The results of seismic studies in the near-shore, shallow waters of the south-western Kara Sea - at the Shpindler, Kharsavey and Mare-Sale sites - showed the presence of a seismic interface which can be interpreted as a submarine permafrost table. The proposed permafiost exhibits a continuous distribution and a strongly dissected top surface overlain by unfrozen sediments. The permafrost table is located at a depth of 4-6 m and 5-10 m below the sea floor at the Shpindler and Mare-Sale sites, respectively. Three dimensional modeling of the permafrost table suggests the presence of relict buried thermodenudational depressions (up to 2 km across) at a minimum sea depth of 40-45 m at the Shpindler and Mare-Sale sites. The depressions may be considered as paragenetic to thermocirques found in cliffs at the Shpindler site. At the Kharasavey site, the permafrost table has an elongated depression parallel to the modern shoreline. The maximum depression depth is 20 m below the seafloor. At present, the relict therrnocirques (Shpindler and Mare-Sale) and the elongated depression (Kharasavey) are completely filled in with sediment and are not evident in modern bottom topography.

Description: Two sediment cores retrieved from the southern Lomonosov Ridge (LR) in 2007 (core ALR07-26C from the top of the ridge, water depth 1359 m, and core ALR07-15C from the base of Geophysicists’ Spur, water depth 2500 m) were investigated for lithology (wt % 〉 63 μm, terrigenous lithic grains 〉500 μm) and microfossils. Prominent peaks of coarse-grained material in ALR07-26C represented largely by quartz and clastic rocks are regarded as inputs of ice and, especially, iceberg-rafted debris (IRD) of Eurasian origin. In accordance with previously obtained evidence from age-constrained cores from the central LR, the highest peak 4 is correlated with the MIS 6–5 boundary and the disintegration of the Saalian ice sheet. The three younger IRD peaks are provisionally correlated with the MIS 5–4, MIS 4–3, and MIS 2–1 boundaries, respectively. Small peaks of coarse-grained material in ALR07-15C dominated by various rocks in contrast represent local material transported by downslope slides mixed with some IRD. No calcareous microfossils occur in the cores, but only agglutinated benthic foraminifers are found. In ALR07-26C, they correlate with IRD-rich layers, which correspond to glacial terminations with more open-sea ice conditions and, probably, higher productivity in the sea-ice marginal zone. The Cyclammina-dominated assemblage in ALR07-26C below IRD peak 4 supports the proposed age estimate for this peak (MIS 6–5), as similar foraminiferal assemblages in other LR cores are recorded in sediments of MIS 7–9 and older. Younger assemblages show a transition from a Recurvoides-dominated assemblage in the early Late Pleistocene to a more “oligotrophic” recent assemblage with a predominance of Reophax and Rhabdammina.