Radiocarbon Ages of Plant Remains in Massive Ground Ice and Underlying Sediments of the Barrow Permafrost Tunnel, Alaska
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9243180 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Go Iwahana (0000-0003-4628-1074), Masao Uchida (0000-0002-3496-2772), Kazuho Horiuchi (0000-0003-3185-8766), Jody Deming, Hajo Eicken (0000-0002-9718-9406), Hiroshi Ohno (0000-0001-8776-9661), Kanako Mantoku, Toshiyuki Kobayashi, Kazuyuki Saito (0000-0001-6663-1217) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 879-891 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Radiocarbon (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-8222 • E-ISSN: 1945-5755 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/rdc.2024.25 |
| OpenAlex | W4393947693 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 32 |
Massive ground ice found in the Barrow Permafrost Tunnel at 3–7 m depths from the surface has been interpreted as an ice wedge and used to reconstruct early Holocene environmental changes. To better understand the development of this ground ice, we conducted radiocarbon dating for 34 samples of plant remains from the massive ground ice and underlying sediment layer. A significantly large gap in the measured radiocarbon ages (more than 24 ka) between massive ice and the underlying sediment layer throughout the tunnel profile suggested at least two possibilities. One is that the lower and older sediment layer had thrust upwards at the boundary between intruding ice wedge and adjacent sediment, and the growing ice had pushed the sediment sideways. Another is that erosional events had removed surface materials at about 12–36 ka BP (14–41 cal ka BP) before the overlaying sediment layer with massive ground ice developed. The overall distribution of radiocarbon ages from the massive ice supported the ice-wedge hypothesis as a formation mechanism, although our results showed several age inversions and large fluctuations. Dating of densely spaced samples revealed two ground-ice regions with similar ages around 11–11.5 and 10–10.5 ka BP divided by a relatively narrow region of transitional ages along the tunnel long-axis. This distribution may be explained by a possible misalignment between the sampling direction and the ice-wedge growth line or by intermittent ice growth with repeated cracking at more random locations than the classic ice-wedge growth model suggested
Archaeology · Earth science · Geochronology · Geography · Glacial period · Ice age · Permafrost · Physical geography · Pleistocene · Radiocarbon dating · Archaeology and Natural History · Climate change and permafrost · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Geology · Oceanography · Paleontology
Emergent Marine Record and Paleoclimate of the Last Interglaciation along the Northwest Alaskan Coast
Sea Level History in Beringia During the Past 250,000 Years
Revised 14 C dating of ice wedge growth in interior Alaska (USA) to MIS 2 reveals cold paleoclimate and carbon recycling in ancient permafrost terrain
Anomalous Radiocarbon Ages from a Holocene Detrital Organic Lens in Alaska and their Implications for Radiocarbon Dating and Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions in the Arctic
Radiocarbon Dating, Barrow, Alaska
Chronologies for Recent Peat Deposits Using Wiggle-Matched Radiocarbon Ages
Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates
The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP)
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |