Environmental implication of geochemical record in the Arctic Ny-Ålesund glacial sediment, Svalbard (Norway)

Yanpeng Yang; Zhong Chen; Yinxian Song; Ming Yan; Chuandong Xue; Junfeng Ji; Godwin A Ayoko; Ray L Frost

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163255

Environmental implication of geochemical record in the Arctic Ny-Ålesund glacial sediment, Svalbard (Norway)

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Jul 1:880:163255. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163255. Epub 2023 Apr 7.

Authors

Yanpeng Yang¹, Zhong Chen¹, Yinxian Song², Ming Yan³, Chuandong Xue¹, Junfeng Ji⁴, Godwin A Ayoko⁵, Ray L Frost⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Land Resource Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, Yunnan Province, China.
² Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Land Resource Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, Yunnan Province, China. Electronic address: songyinxian@gmail.com.
³ Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai 200136, China. Electronic address: yanming@pric.org.cn.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Surficial Geochemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Physics and Centre for The Environment, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, GPO Box 2324, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia.

PMID: 37031934
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163255

Abstract

Glacial sediments as an important end member of the global dust system, could indicate changes in global climate, aerosols sources, ocean elements, and productivity. With global warming, ice caps shrinking and glaciers retreat at high latitudes have attracted concern. To understand the response of glacier to environment and climate in modern high latitude ice-marginal environments, this paper investigated glacial sediments in the Ny-Ålesund region of the Arctic and clarified the response of polar environmental to global changes through geochemical characteristics of glacial sediments. The results showed that: 1) main factors affecting the elements distribution of the Ny-Ålesund glacial sediments were thought as soil formation, bedrock and weathering, and biological activity; 2) variations of SiO₂/Al₂O₃ and SiO₂/Al₂O₃ + Fe₂O₃, indicating low weathering of the soil. The ratio of Na₂O/K₂O indicating a weak chemical weathering, was negatively correlated to the CIA. With the average CIA of Ny-Ålesund glacial sediments for main minerals of quartz, feldspar, and muscovite as well as dolomite and calcite 50.13, which implied glacial sediments at the early stage of chemical weathering and depletion of Ca and Na; 3) the separating effect of stones and soils by stone circle formation due to thermal conductivity and frost heave makes sediments in stone circle have lower chemical weathering with only two main minerals, albite and quartz; 4) changes of carbonate content in sediments with glacier front retreating in different period implied that weathering rate of calcite averagely reached an estimate of 0.0792%wt/year in glacier A. The succession of vegetation made biological weathering become an important driving force for carbonate leaching from glacial sediments. These results and data provide scientifically significant archive for future global change studies.

Keywords: Arctic; Elementals geochemistry distributions; Glacial sediments; Minerals composition; Rapid climate change.