Abstract
The presence of marine microfossils (diatoms) in glacier ice and ice cores has been documented from numerous sites in Antarctica, Greenland, as well as from sites in the Andes and the Altai mountains, and attributed to entrainment and transport by winds. However, their presence and diversity in snow and ice, especially in polar regions, is not well documented and still poorly understood. Here we present the first data to resolve the regional and temporal distribution of diatoms in ice cores, spanning a 20 year period across four sites in the southern Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land, Antarctica. We assess the regional variability in diatom composition and abundance at annual and sub-annual resolution across all four sites. These data corroborate the dominance of contemporary marine diatoms in Antarctic Peninsula ice cores, reveal that the timing and amount of diatoms deposited vary between low and high elevation sites and support existing evidence that marine diatoms have the potential to yield a novel wind paleoenvironmental proxy for ice cores in the southern Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land.
Highlights
Diatoms are unicellular algae with siliceous cell walls that inhabit aquatic environments throughout the world (Smol and 20 Stoermer, 2010)
Our multi-site assessment of diatoms preserved in Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land ice cores confirm that the 20 year record is dominated by pristine specimens of Southern Ocean marine diatoms
Diatom records from all four Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land ice cores reveal a recent rise in diatom concentrations
Summary
Diatoms are unicellular algae with siliceous cell walls that inhabit aquatic environments throughout the world (Smol and 20 Stoermer, 2010). Diatoms are sensitive to oceanographic conditions and responsive to environmental changes These characteristics make them valuable as proxies for paleoenvironmental and palaeoceanographic reconstructions (Smol and Stoermer, 2010). Despite their aquatic habitats, several studies support they can be airborne (Lichti-Federovich, 1984; Gayley et al, 1989; Chalmers et al, 1996; McKay et al, 2008; Wang et al, 2008; 25 Harper and Mckay, 2010; Spaulding et al, 2010; Hausmann et al, 2011; Budgeon et al, 2012; Papina et al, 2013; Fritz et al, 2015).
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