26 Reconstructing Environmental Change from Marine, Lacustrine, and Terrestrial Sedimentary Records (Posters)

Saturday, 29 March 2025
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
North Great Hall

STABLE LATE HOLOCENE LEAF WAX CHAIN LENGTH DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE HUDSON STRAIT

Paper number: 26-13
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Authors

Abstract

Understanding paleoenvironmental change in the Arctic, a region especially sensitive to warming, is important for understanding environmental and climate changes in the modern day. Proxies such as leaf waxes preserved in marine sediments help display these changes. Leaf waxes are protective coatings on the surfaces of plant leaves. They are comprised of hydrocarbon chains, the length of which provides valuable information on the changes in the area’s vegetation composition. The Hudson Strait is a unique area located in the Arctic Canada due to its variable ice coverage and salinity levels throughout the year. We report results from a marine sediment core from eastern Hudson Strait (61.5075°, 71.1742°) that spans the late Holocene. We sub-sampled the marine sediment core and analyzed the concentration of leaf wax n-alkanoic acid homologs using gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector. We found that all chain lengths (C20-C32) stayed stable throughout the record, with C24-C28 having the highest abundance. These abundances remained stable except for a greater input of C20 and C22 n-alkanoic acids that occurred in one sample around 2,000 years ago. Our aim is to figure out what caused these changes in the leaf wax chain length abundances within the cores.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 3

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025NE-408700

© Copyright 2025 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.