Publication Date:
2016-05-11
Description:
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 (m-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.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
isiRev
Format:
application/pdf
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