Description: Thermal erosion of permafrost coasts delivers large quantities of organic carbon (OC) to arctic coastal waters. While deposition of permafrost OC in nearshore sediments potentially attenuates the ‘permafrost carbon feedback’, continued resuspension of sediments by waves, storms and currents potentially enhances greenhouse gas production in the nearshore zone. Recent studies, focusing on bulk sediments, suggest that permafrost OC derived from coastal erosion is predominantly deposited in the nearshore zone. However, hydrodynamic gradients in the coastal zone allow sorting processes to strongly influence the OC distribution and fate, which cannot be assessed by using bulk sediment approaches. Here, we study soils and sediments fractionated by density (1.8 g/cm-3 cutoff), separating the organic from the mineral-associated fraction, and size (63 µm), separating sand-associated from silt and clay-associated OC. We sampled sediments along a transect from an active retrogressive thaw slump at the coast of Herschel Island - Qikiqtaruk (Yukon, Canada), to the nearshore zone, towards an offshore sedimentary basin. Each sediment fraction was analysed for its elemental content (TOC, TN), carbon isotope signature (δ13C, Δ14C), molecular biomarkers (n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids, lignin phenols, cutin acids), and mineral surface area. Preliminary data show that the OC partitioning between the sediment fractions changes considerably over the transect, suggesting that hydrodynamic sorting processes take place. Additionally, the OC characteristics of the fractions are significantly different from each other. For example, the low-density organic fraction shows a slightly less degraded signal than the high-density silt- and clay-associated OC fraction in several molecular biomarker proxies, and has a higher average TOC/TN ratio (24 ±3 versus 12 ±2). We aim to disentangle sorting processes and degradation mechanisms of permafrost OC along this transect of fractionated soils and sediments in the nearshore zone, and give new insights into pathway of this material upon erosion.

Description: The Arctic is subject to substantial changes due to the greenhouse gas induced climate change. While impacts on lateral transport pathways such as rivers have been extensively studied yet, there is little knowledge about ecological and geological reactions of nearshore environments, even though those are of high importance for native communities. In this study, we use the extensive Landsat archive with comparable data from 1982 on to investigate sediment dispersal and sea surface temperatures under changing seasonal wind conditions in the nearshore zone of Herschel Island in the western Canadian Arctic. Even in the absence of an extensive in-situ dataset, we reveal clear differences between the two prevailing wind conditions (E and NW). During E wind conditions, the Mackenzie River Plume gets distributed over large parts of the Canadian Beaufort Shelf and is the main influencing factor for nearshore sediment dispersal and sea surface temperature dynamics. Contrary, the nearshore dynamics during NW wind conditions are not affected by the Mackenzie River plume, revealing the local nature of the nearshore environment. First field measurements from summer 2017 indicate that recently published SPM and turbidity models are not able to reflect this local nature and strongly underestimate reality. In future, we plan to collect an extensive validation dataset in Arctic nearshore environments to calculate accurate bio-optical models.

Description: Collapse of permafrost coasts delivers large quantities of particulate organic carbon (POC) to arctic coastal areas. With rapidly‐changing environmental conditions, sediment and organic carbon (OC) mobilization and transport pathways are also changing. Here, we assess the sources and sinks of POC in the highly‐dynamic nearshore zone of Herschel Island ‐ Qikiqtaruk (Yukon, Canada). Our results show that POC concentrations sharply decrease, from 15.9 to 0.3 mg L‐1, within the first 100 – 300 meters offshore. Simultaneously, radiocarbon ages of POC drop from 16,400 to 3,600 14C years, indicating rapid settling of old permafrost POC to underlying sediments. This suggests that permafrost OC is, apart from a very narrow resuspension zone (〈5 m water depth), predominantly deposited in nearshore sediments. While long‐term storage of permafrost OC in marine sediments potentially limits biodegradation and its subsequent release as greenhouse gas, resuspension of fine‐grained, OC‐rich sediments in the nearshore zone potentially enhances OC turnover.