Halogen geochemistry of the McMurdo dry valleys lakes, Antarctica: Clues to the origin of solutes and lake evolution

Abstract

We have determined the halogen and boron concentrations in the ice-covered lakes of Taylor Valley, Antarctica, to better establish the sources of salts and evolutionary histories of these unusual water bodies. In addition, we report on a series of 129I measurements that were compared with previous 36Cl data that also help constrain the source of solutes and histories of the lakes. The new data, when put into context of previous work on these systems over the past forty years, allow us to make the following conclusions. The primary source of solutes to Lake Hoare, the youngest of the lakes, is the dissolution of marine aerosols and aeolian salts and the chemical weathering of dust on the glaciers. The geochemistry of Lake Fryxell, the brackish water lake, is primarily dominated by the diffusion from a halite-saturated brine at the sediment-water interface and the recent infilling of the lake by glacier meltwater. These waters have chemical weathering and marine aerosols components. Lake Bonney has two distinct lobes whose hypersaline hypolimnia have different chemistries. Both of the lobes are remnants of ancient marine waters that have been modified by the input of weathering products. This lake has also been modified by periods of cryogenic concentration when solutes have been lost via mineral precipitation. Thus the geochemistry of Lake Bonney owes its unusual geochemistry, in part, to variations in the climate in the Taylor Valley over at least the past 300kyr. The 129I data from the Taylor Valley are similar to those from fracture fluids in crystalline rocks from the Northern Hemisphere.