Most seafloor communities at depths below the photosynthesis zone rely on food that sinks through the water column. However, the nature and strength of this pelagic-benthic coupling and its influence on the structure and diversity of seafloor communities is unclear, especially around Antarctica where ecological data are sparse. Here we show that the strength of pelagic-benthic coupling along the East Antarctic shelf depends on both physical processes and the types of benthic organisms considered. In an approach based on modelling food availability, we combine remotely sensed sea-surface chlorophyll-a, a regional ocean model and diatom abundances from sediment grabs with particle tracking and show that fluctuating seabed currents are crucial in the redistribution of surface productivity at the seafloor. The estimated availability of suspended food near the seafloor correlates strongly with the abundance of benthic suspension feeders, while the deposition of food particles correlates with decreasing suspension feeder richness and more abundant deposit feeders. The modelling framework, which can be modified for other regions, has broad applications in conservation and management, as it enables spatial predictions of key components of seafloor biodiversity over vast regions around Antarctica.

Abstract. Lake Vida, located in Victoria Valley, is one of the largest lakes in the McMurdo dry valleys and is known to contain hypersaline liquid brine sealed below 16 m of freshwater ice. For the first time, Lake Vida was drilled to a depth of 27 m. Below 21 m the ice is marked by well-sorted sand layers up to 20 cm thick within a matrix of salty ice. From ice chemistry, isotopic composition of δ 18 O and δ 2 H, and ground penetrating radar profiles, we conclude that the entire 27 m of ice formed from surface runoff and the sediment layers represent the accumulation of surface deposits. Radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating limit the maximum age of the lower ice to 6300 14 C yr BP. As the ice cover ablated downwards during periods of low surface inflow, progressive accumulation of sediment layers insulated and preserved the ice and brine beneath, analogous to the processes that preserve shallow ground ice. The repetition of these sediment layers reveals hydrologic variability in Victoria Valley during the mid-to late Holocene. Lake Vida is an exemplar site for understanding the preservation of subsurface brine, ice, and sediment in a cold desert environment.

Abstract. Sediment records recovered from the Baltic Sea during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 347 provide a unique opportunity to study paleoenvironmental and climate change in central and northern Europe. Such studies contribute to a better understanding of how environmental parameters change in continental shelf seas and enclosed basins. Here we present a multi-proxy-based reconstruction of paleotemperature (both marine and terrestrial), paleosalinity, and paleoecosystem changes from the Little Belt (Site M0059) over the past ∼ 8000 years and evaluate the applicability of inorganic-and organic-based proxies in this particular setting.All salinity proxies (diatoms, aquatic palynomorphs, ostracods, diol index) show that lacustrine conditions occurred in the Little Belt until ∼ 7400 cal yr BP. A connection to the Kattegat at this time can thus be excluded, but a direct connection to the Baltic Proper may have existed. The transition to the brackish-marine conditions of the Littorina Sea stage (more saline and warmer) occurred within ∼ 200 years when the connection to the Kattegat became established after ∼ 7400 cal yr BP. The different salinity proxies used here generally show similar trends in relative changes in salinity, but often do not allow quantitative estimates of salinity.Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. U. Kotthoff et al.: Little Belt multi-proxy comparisonThe reconstruction of water temperatures is associated with particularly large uncertainties and variations in absolute values by up to 8 • C for bottom waters and up to 16 • C for surface waters. Concerning the reconstruction of temperature using foraminiferal Mg / Ca ratios, contamination by authigenic coatings in the deeper intervals may have led to an overestimation of temperatures. Differences in results based on the lipid paleothermometers (long chain diol index and TEX L 86 ) can partly be explained by the application of modern-day proxy calibrations to intervals that experienced significant changes in depositional settings: in the case of our study, the change from freshwater to marine conditions. Our study shows that particular caution has to be taken when applying and interpreting proxies in coastal environments and marginal seas, where water mass conditions can experience more rapid and larger changes than in open ocean settings. Approaches using a multitude of independent proxies may thus allow a more robust paleoenvironmental assessment.

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Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 347 aimed to retrieve sediments from different settings of the Baltic Sea, encompassing the last interglacial-glacial cycle to address scientific questions along four main research themes: 1. Climate and sea level dynamics of marine isotope Stage (MIS) 5, including onsets and terminations; 2. Complexities of the latest glacial, MIS 4-MIS 2; 3. Glacial and Holocene (MIS 2-MIS 1) climate forcing; and 4. Deep biosphere in Baltic Sea Basin (BSB) sediments. These objectives were accomplished by drilling in six subbasins: (1) the gateway of the BSB (Anholt), where we focused on sediments from MIS 6-5 and MIS 2-1; (2) a subbasin in the southwestern BSB (Little Belt) that possibly holds a unique MIS 5 record; (3, 4) two subbasins in the south (Bornholm Basin and Hanö Bay) that may hold long complete records from MIS 4-2; (5) a 450 m deep subbasin in the central Baltic (Landsort Deep) that promises to contain a thick and continuous record of the last ~14,000 y; and (6) a subbasin in the very north (Ångermanälven River estuary) that contains a uniquely varved (annually deposited) sediment record of the last 10,000 y. These six areas were expected to contain sediment sequences representative of the last ~140,000 y, with paleoenvironmental information relevant on a semicontinental scale because the Baltic Sea drains an area four times as large as the basin itself. The location of the BSB in the heartland of a recurrently waning and waxing ice sheet, the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, has resulted in a complex development: repeated glaciations of different magnitudes, sensitive responses to sea level and gateway threshold changes, large shifts in sedimentation patterns, and high sedimentation rates. Its position also makes it a unique link between Eurasian and northwest European terrestrial records. Therefore, the sediments of this largest European intracontinental basin form a rare archive of climate evolution over the latest glacial cycle. High sedimentation rates provide an excellent opportunity to reconstruct climatic variability of global importance at a unique resolution from a marine-brackish setting. Comparable sequences cannot be retrieved anywhere in the surrounding onshore regions. Furthermore, and crucially, the large variability (salinity, climate, sedimentation, and oxygenation) that the BSB has under

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The Southern Ocean paleoceanography provides key insights into how iron fertilization and oceanic productivity developed through Pleistocene ice-ages and their role in influencing the carbon cycle. We report a high-resolution record of dust deposition and ocean productivity for the Antarctic Zone, close to the main dust source, Patagonia. Our deep-ocean records cover the last 1.5 Ma, thus doubling that from Antarctic ice-cores. We find a 5 to 15-fold increase in dust deposition during glacials and a 2 to 5-fold increase in biogenic silica deposition, reflecting higher ocean productivity during interglacials. This antiphasing persisted throughout the last 25 glacial cycles. Dust deposition became more pronounced across the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) in the Southern Hemisphere, with an abrupt shift suggesting more severe glaciations since ~0.9 Ma. Productivity was intermediate pre-MPT, lowest during the MPT and highest since 0.4 Ma. Generally, glacials experienced extended sea-ice cover, reduced bottom-water export and Weddell Gyre dynamics, which helped lower atmospheric CO2 levels.

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