Human Influence on Natural Arctic Vegetation in the 17th Century and Climatic Change Since A.D. 1600 in Northwest Spitsbergen: A Paleobotanical Study

Abstract

Paleobotany is used to study the human influence on vegetation in the first half of the 17th century around Smeerenburg, a temporary Dutch whaling settlement on Amsterdam Island in northwest Spitsbergen. The local vegetation succession recorded in a settlement diagram indicates that the nutrient level of the soil increased strongly during the settlement period and decreased only slowly after the departure of the whalers. Climatic change since A.D. 1600 is reconstructed with palynological methods. The core from the settlement contained in layers representing the settlement period a great number of pollen types alien to Spitsbergen, evidently brought there by the Dutch whalers. In bird-cliff sediment cores collected 4 km from Smeerenburg these types were used to trace the settlement period. In a peat bog core collected about 100 km south of Smeerenburg the settlement period was traced by a radiocarbon date. Additional chronological correlation was established by means of lithological characteristics. At the bird cliff and in the peat bog no changes in local vegetation type were recorded during the last few hundred years. However, concordant trends observed in the pollen curves of the concentration diagrams were, by means of a simple calculation, rendered into separate curves for each diagram, defined as common-trend curves. The common-trend curves are interpreted in terms of climatic change. The reconstructed climate is as follows: a general deterioration during the first half of the 17th century, only interrupted by a short and passing amelioration. The results are in accord with climatic reconstructions in literature for northwest Spitsbergen based on historical data and for Camp Century (Greenland) based on an ice core. The diagrams indicate the former presence of two taxa not yet known from Spitsbergen: Myriophyllum spicatum and Parnassia.