| The last deglaciation, 20,000–10,000 years ago, was a period of global warming and rapidly shrinking ice sheets. It was also climatically unstable and retreats were interrupted by re-advances. Retreat rates and timing relative to climatic changes have therefore been difficult to establish. We here study a suite of 12 marine sediment cores from Storfjorden and Storfjorden Trough, Svalbard. The purpose is to reconstruct retreat patterns and retreat rates of a high northern latitude marine-based ice stream from the Svalbard-Barents Sea Ice Sheet in relation to paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic changes. The study is based on abundance and composition of planktic and benthic foraminiferal assemblages, ice rafted debris (IRD), lithology, and 70 AMS-14C dates.... |
