A Driftwood‐Based Record of Arctic Sea Ice During the Last 500 Years From Northern Svalbard Reveals Sea Ice Dynamics in the Arctic Ocean and Arctic Peripheral Seas

Abstract

The Arctic is vulnerable to climatic changes on a range of temporal and spatial scales from geological to inter-annual, and a hotspot of warming under modern climate change due to the Arctic Amplification (Serreze & Francis, 2006) -a term for the feedbacks and interactions from the region's sea ice and snow cover resulting in enhanced and accelerated greenhouse gas-induced warming in the Arctic. Recent anthropogenic

Wood‐Based Carbon Storage in the Mackenzie River Delta: The World's Largest Mapped Riverine Wood Deposit

“…Alternatively, short carbon residence times could reflect a rapid degradation of the wood material, potentially releasing CO 2 that had relatively recently been sequestered by photosynthesis from the atmosphere. Some large wood must escape degradation in the delta, as documented by the pan‐Arctic transport of driftwood within sea ice: Mackenzie‐derived wood reaches Greenland and Alaska's Beaufort Coast and wood from Siberia reaches Svalbard and eastern Greenland (Hellmann et al., 2013; Hole et al., 2021). Third, deep wood may persist for much longer periods of time, and the stock of LW buried in the delta away from these surficial deposits visible in satellite imagery (Figure 2) could be much larger.…”

“…This could be regionally important as the estimated wood carbon storage represents a minimum value for a single major Arctic river delta that contributes just under 10% of total annual mean river discharge to the Arctic Ocean (Whitefield et al, 2015). Based on this consideration and the ecological importance of driftwood in freshwater, terrestrial, coastal, and marine environments (Wohl & Iskin, 2021) and its wide-reaching transport around the Arctic (Hole et al, 2021;Schreiner et al, 2013), we suggest that large wood retained within deltas represents an important portion of the carbon cycle of the Arctic.…”

“…Arctic rivers account for ∼15% of global drainage area and, although much of this area is not forested, there is evidence for long‐term wood storage in Arctic environments (Müller, 1962) and supply of driftwood to coastal and marine environments. For example, recent work demonstrates widespread transport of wood supplied by rivers across the Arctic Ocean (Hole et al., 2021). Across the Arctic, permafrost regions currently contain more stored carbon than is in the atmosphere (Schuur et al., 2015), with Arctic deltas containing 91 × 10 15 g‐C stored in permafrost soils (Hugelius et al., 2014).…”

The importance of Arctic driftwood for interdisciplinary global change research (Short Communication / Methodological note)

“…Sampling was mainly of old driftwood because the probability of successful cross-dating increases the greater the number of tree rings. Our new driftwood sampling sites from 2022 (red dots), together with the location of previous driftwood sampling sites (yellow dots), from which the age and origin of Arctic driftwood have been documented (Giddings 1940(Giddings , 1952Oswalt 1951, Stone 1958, Bartholin and Hjort 1987, Eggertsson 1993, 1994a, 1994bEggertsson and Laeyendecker 1995, Johansen 1998, 1999, 2001Nash 2000, Johansen and Hytteborn 2001, Hellmann et al 2013, 2016a, 2016bSteelandt et al 2015, Sander et al 2021, Shumilov et al 2020, Hole et al 2021, Linderholm et al 2021, Kolář et al 2022. The orange ovals refer to the main boreal source regions of Arctic driftwood along the Yenisei and Lena in central and eastern Siberia.…”

Dating Coastal Archaeological Wood From Pingusugruk (15th–17th CE), Northern Alaska:

“…Along the coasts of northern Alaska, around the Birnirk site near Point Barrow, wood can also arrive from eastward rivers such as the Mackenzie River (Giddings, 1943a(Giddings, , 1952aAlix, 2005). Driftwood accumulations on beaches are a recurring seasonal resource related to several climatic and environmental factors such as spring thaw, riverbank erosion, wind direction, marine currents, and sea-ice cover (Giddings, 1941(Giddings, , 1952aEurola, 1971;Eggertsson, 1994;Dyke, 1997;Alix & Brewster, 2004;Alix, 2005;Hellmann et al 2013Hellmann et al , 2017Hole & Macias-Fauria, 2017;Hole et al 2021;Sander et al 2021).…”