24-24 ANNUAL SEDIMENTATION PATTERNS IN A PROGLACIAL LAKE IN SVALBARD; IMPLICATIONS FOR A CHANGING ARCTIC CLIMATE AND HYDROLOGIC CYCLE

Session: Lake Sedimentary Records of Past Climate and Environment (Posters)

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Abstract:

The Arctic’s sensitivity to temperature shifts makes it a critical region for understanding ongoing climate change. Lacustrine sediment records from this environment provide essential context for past and future climate fluctuations. Lake Linne, or Linnévatnet, a glacial-fed lake on the west coast of Svalbard, Arctic Norway, has been monitored and studied for the past twenty years. This archive of information provides both high-resolution data on the region's environmental conditions and allows for a better understanding of how we interpret climatic change in a proglacial lake record. Here, we analyze the relationship between annual Linnevatnet sediment yield and other environmental datasets, such as air temperature, snowmelt, ice conditions, and rainfall events, to better understand how and to what extent the local hydrological system is shifting. These results additionally have important implications for interpreting proglacial lake sediment records. 

In this study, we characterize how the hydrologic cycle has shifted over a twenty year period, with a particular focus on the interval 2024-2025. Notably, sedimentation in Linnevatnet seems to be moving from a springtime/nival melt dominated system to a more variable one influenced heavily by large shoulder-season rainfall events. These changes affect such processes as glacial and nival melt, snow and rock avalanches, and sediment delivery to the lake itself. For 2024-2025, preliminary results indicate that sediment yield was equally distributed between the autumn (large rainfall events) and springtime (nival melt). Planned grain size analysis of sediment trap material, alongside comparison with air and lake water temperatures, automated cameras, snow tree data, precipitation data, etc., from this past year, will further elucidate sedimentation patterns in Linnévatnet. 

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