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Holocene climate change and landscape development from a low-Arctic tundra lake in the western Hudson Bay region of Manitoba, Canada

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Abstract

The low-Arctic region of western Hudson Bay in interior Canada is one of the most poorly described areas of North America in terms of Holocene climate history. Here, we present new data from a well-dated lake sediment core from northern Manitoba, Canada. We assemble one of the richest multi-proxy datasets to date for a low-Arctic lake and characterize terrestrial and lake processes and exchanges between them. These proxies include fossil pollen and diatom assemblages, charcoal, magnetic properties (susceptibility and remanance), mineral grain size, bulk density, organic-matter content, elemental geochemistry, sediment cation (K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe2+/Fe3+) and macronutrient (P, N, C) contents, biogenic-silica content, basal peat dates (wetland initiation), and stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N). The sediment proxies record both broad- and fine-scale (millennial and sub-millennial) climate change. We find indirect evidence for a cool and dry post-glacial period from 9,000 to 6,500 cal yr BP, a warm and moist mid-Holocene period from 6,500 to 2,500 cal yr BP, and a cool and moist late-Holocene period from 2,500 cal yr BP to present. High-resolution geochemical data suggests 300- to 500-year-long dry periods at ~6,500–6,100, 5,300–5,000, 3,300–2,800, and 400–0 cal yr BP. These results suggest that terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem dynamics in the western Hudson Bay region are sensitive to past climate change and are likely to respond to future changes in temperature and precipitation.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Tom Brown for assistance with radiocarbon dating and Dan Engstrom for help with 210Pb dating. Thanks also to Jon Kovac for assistance in the field. We thank Darrell Kaufman and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. This study was supported by National Science Foundation grants DEB-0743364, DEB-0904050, DEB 0092704, and DBI-0520803. The IRM was made possible through the Instrumentation and Facilities program of the National Science Foundation, Earth Science Division and by funding from the University of Minnesota. Initial core processing was performed at the Limnological Research Center (University of Minnesota). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. This work was also funded, in part, by a grant to St Olaf from the Howard Hughes Medical Institution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies Program and Department of Earth and Oceanographic Science, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, 04011, USA

    Philip Camill

  2. Department of Biology, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, 55057, USA

    Charles E. Umbanhowar Jr.

  3. Department of Physics and Environmental Sciences Program, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, 06106, USA

    Christoph Geiss

  4. St. Croix Watershed Research Station, Science Museum of Minnesota, Marine on St. Croix, MN, 55047, USA

    William O. Hobbs & Mark B. Edlund

  5. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Avery Cook Shinneman

  6. Department of Geoscience, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA

    Jeffrey A. Dorale

  7. Department of Biology, North Central College, Naperville, IL, 60540, USA

    Jason Lynch

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  1. Philip Camill
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Correspondence to Philip Camill.

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This is one of 18 papers published in a special issue edited by Darrell Kaufman, and dedicated to reconstructing Holocene climate and environmental change from Arctic lake sediments.

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Camill, P., Umbanhowar, C.E., Geiss, C. et al. Holocene climate change and landscape development from a low-Arctic tundra lake in the western Hudson Bay region of Manitoba, Canada. J Paleolimnol 48, 175–192 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-012-9619-0

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