Skip navigational links A Glaciochemical Record of Natural and Anthropengic Environmental Change in the Northwestern North American Arctic
Principal Investigator - Karl Kreutz
This is a collaborative proposal between the Universities of Maine and New Hampshire and the Geological Survey of Canada. This Office of International Science and Engineering is contributing to this award. The Principal Investigators will recover two ice cores the Eclipse Icefield (3100 meters) in the St. Elias Mountains, Yukon Territory, Canada in cooperation with the Geological Survey of Canada in 2002. The core will be analyzed for stable isotopes, major ions, trace elements, rare earth elements and persistent organic pollutants. The Eclipse record will provide, for the first time, detailed depositional histories of a wide variety of pollutants during the last 200 years in the remote northwest North American Arctic.
Through the use of unique chemical tracers, the Principal Investigators will be able to identify source regions for these pollutants, changes in source regions with time, and the role of atmospheric circulation in controlling contaminant distributions in the northwest North American Arctic. The detailed multi-parameter record of natural and anthropogenic change will result in a greatly improved record of climate and environmental change for a region in which very few records currently exist.
