Plant, insect, and fungi fossils under the center of Greenland’s ice sheet are evidence of ice-free times

The persistence and size of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) through the Pleistocene is uncertain. This is important because reconstructing changes in the GrIS determines its contribution to sea level rise during prior warm climate periods and informs future projections. To understand better the history of Greenland's ice, we analyzed glacial till collected in 1993 from below 3 km of ice at Summit, Greenland. The till contains plant fragments, wood, insect parts, fungi, and cosmogenic nuclides showing that the bed of the GrIS at Summit is a long-lived, stable land surface preserving a record of deposition, exposure, and interglacial ecosystems. Knowing that central Greenland was tundra-covered during the Pleistocene informs the understanding of Arctic biosphere response to deglaciation.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2024-08-05
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407465121
Citations
6
Primary Topic
Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.26

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article

Plant, insect, and fungi fossils under the center of Greenland’s ice sheet are evidence of ice-free times

D. M. Peteet, Marc W. Caffee, Halley M. Mastro, Ole Bennike et al.
6 citations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
2.26
article

Plant, insect, and fungi fossils under the center of Greenland’s ice sheet are evidence of ice-free times

D. M. Peteet, Marc W. Caffee, Halley M. Mastro, Ole Bennike, Greg Balco, Eric J. Steig, Alan J. Hidy, Barry Rock, Lee B. Corbett, Paul Robert Bierman, Chris T. Halsted
article en
6 citations

Abstract

The persistence and size of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) through the Pleistocene is uncertain. This is important because reconstructing changes in the GrIS determines its contribution to sea level rise during prior warm climate periods and informs future projections. To understand better the history of Greenland's ice, we analyzed glacial till collected in 1993 from below 3 km of ice at Summit, Greenland. The till contains plant fragments, wood, insect parts, fungi, and cosmogenic nuclides showing that the bed of the GrIS at Summit is a long-lived, stable land surface preserving a record of deposition, exposure, and interglacial ecosystems. Knowing that central Greenland was tundra-covered during the Pleistocene informs the understanding of Arctic biosphere response to deglaciation.

Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVol. 121(33)
University of Vermont (US), Goddard Institute for Space Studies (US), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (US), University of New Hampshire (US), University of Washington (US), Purdue University West Lafayette (US), Williams College (US), Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (DK), Earth and Space Research (US)
National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Life below water
Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
2.26
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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