Abstract ATM-9809795 Miller, Gifford H. University of Colorado Title: Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum Paleoclimates of the Eastern Canadian Arctic Reconstructed from Biotic and Geochemical Proxies in Lake Sediments The Arctic includes many of the most sensitive feedbacks in the climate system, especially those that may change substantially on time scales of relevance to humans (duration of seasonal and permanent sea ice and snow cover, position of treeline, permafrost and associated gas hydrates, loci of oceanic deep water formation). Sediments cores from Baffin Island lakes serve as records of paleoenvironmental change; these sites provide the first continuous terrestrial paleoenvironmental records through the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) from the Canadian Arctic or Greenland. Recent studies of Holocene lake sediments have also focussed on the utility of this medium to evaluate lacustrine responses to Little Ice Age (LIA) cooling, the best documented late Holocene climate oscillation. This award supports a study to evaluate regional paleoenvironmental change during the LIA, and to place 20th-century warming in a larger context. This study will focus on "glacial age" terrestrial conditions in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and the impacts of known dramatic reorganizations of the climate system (e.g. Heinrich or D/O events) on terrestrial ecosystems in the Arctic.
