Late Weichselian ice-sheet flow directions in the Russian northern Barents Sea from high-resolution imagery of submarine glacial landforms

Abstract

The locations and orientations of more than 1000 late Quaternary subglacial and ice-marginal landforms, including streamlined sedimentary bed forms, glacitectonic hill-hole pairs, meltwater channels, and eskers, were mapped from blocks of multibeam data (area of 4861 km2) in the little-known Russian Barents Sea. Between Sentralbanken and Admiralty Bank, at ~75°N, there is evidence for southward ice flow. Ice-flow indicators between Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya show northeast flow into the head of St. Anna Trough. There is also evidence of southeast flow off the bank to the south of Franz Josef Land, and of flow convergence with northeast-flowing ice in Sedov Trough. Northeast flow of ice between Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land suggests that the latter archipelago was not overrun by ice flowing north from the Barents Sea and, therefore, that a subsidiary ice dome was likely on Franz Josef Land. A major ice divide was also present at ~76°N –77°N in the Russian Barents Sea.

Structure of Benthic Microbial Communities in the Northeastern Part of the Barents Sea

“…The bottom sampling sites were selected based on multibeam and acoustic profiling data [ 9 ]. Bottom sediments were sampled with a gravity core (4 m long and about 800 kg in weight) with an inserted plastic liner.…”

“…Glacial deposits seem to be a good lithological barrier for fluids migrating from the deeply buried sedimentary sequence to the sea bottom surface and are often covered with rather thin Upper Pleistocene glacial–marine and Holocene marine sediments. The modern bottom relief of the Barents Sea is formed by glacial, glacial–marine, and marine morphogenetic complexes of underwater hills and troughs and is complicated by local erosional and accumulative structures due to iceberg activity and fluid discharge processes [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Distinct modes of meltwater drainage and landform development beneath the last Barents Sea ice sheet

“…Geomorphological records preserved on deglaciated beds offer valuable insights into the long-term evolution of ice sheets and their subglacial hydrological systems (e.g., Clark and Walder, 1994;Huus and Lykke-Andersen, 2000;Greenwood and Clark, 2009;Nitsche et al, 2013;Storrar et al, 2014;Livingstone et al, 2015;Simkins et al, 2017;Dewald et al, 2021;Hogan et al, 2022;Kirkham et al, 2022). The importance of subglacial water in facilitating late-stage deglaciation of the Arctic-and marine-based Barents Sea Ice Sheet (BSIS) is becoming increasingly apparent, with an abundance of subglacial meltwater features including meltwater channels, tunnel valleys (up to several kilometres wide, hundreds of metres deep valleys often containing quasi-parallel channels), subglacial lakes, and eskers recently documented in the central Barents Sea (Bjarnadóttir et al, 2014;Esteves et al, 2017;Newton and Huuse, 2017;Dowdeswell et al, 2021). The Barents Sea region has relatively thin glacial sediment cover (typically <100 m) (Solheim and Kristoffersen, 1984), and generally low present-day sedimentation rates around 2-5 cm ka -1 (Elverhøi et al, 1989), making it an ideal location for geomorphological study with relatively little post-glacial landscape modification.…”