Palynology of North American arctic lakes

Abstract

Recent syntheses of late Quaternary pollen diagrams from many regions of the world illustrate the significant progress made in reconstructing past vegetation and climatic change in recent decades (Wright et al. 1993; TEMPO 1996). However, the Arctic in general, and the Canadian Arctic in particular (Figure 1), remain with relatively few pollen diagrams (Gajewski et al. 1995; Tarasov et al. 1998, 2000; Edwards et al. 2000a; CAPE 2001). The region best known from the point of view of palynology is Baffin Island, where several pollen studies have reported the postglacial vegetation history (discussed below). The middle and high Arctic are particularly under-studied, while at treeline more data are available. Many of these are based upon the analysis of lake sediments, sometimes in conjunction with analysis of other biological and chemical limnological evidence (e.g., MacDonald et al. 1993; Ponader et al. 2002). As a result, a coherent picture is emerging of the postglacial history of the treeline zone.