Problems associated with the radiocarbon dating of organic-carbon- poor arctic lake sediments have limited the utility of paleoclimatic inferences drawn from these repositories. To evaluate the role of the Arctic in the global climate system from the geological record requires a network of sites, each with a secure independent geochronology. Separation of cause and effect, lead and lag times, and distinguishing climate change from vegetation migration all require temporal resolution better than 500 years, about the limit of previous studies. Although the precision of 14C measurements by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has steadily improved during the last decade to its current precision of <1%, less effort has been directed at separating heterogeneous lake sediments into its constituent organic compounds. The Paleoclimate of Arctic Lakes and Estuaries (PALE) program within the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) initiative requires both reliable radiocarbon dating and expeditious processing of samples. This award will meet this need by providing a standardized sample preparation protocol for organic-carbon-poor arctic lake sediment based on the results of earlier research, and prioritizing sample handling so that basal dates for cores collected under the PALE initiative will be processed within 2 months of receipt. Standardized pretreatment for PALE researchers will ensure an adequate number of reliable dates for each core.
