The Terrestrial Climate Archive of El'gygytgyn Meteorite Crater (Northeast Siberia)
This is an ICDP and BMBF project.
Background
El'gygytgyn Crater Lake, located in central Chukotka, Arctic Russia, fills a basin 12 km in diameter and 170 m deep. The lake is placed in an impact crater that is 18 km in diameter and has continuous permafrost in the catchment.
Combined permafrost and lake sediment drilling is devoted to reconstruct palaeoclimate und palaeoenvironmental changes of the terrestrial Arctic. The archives reach far back as 3.6 Ma ago, the time of the meteor impact.
Objectives
Permafrost dominates landscape dynamics at El'gygytgyn Crater and triggers sediment release into the lake. We use samples from drilling into the catchment, from exposed sections and from the surface
- to understand permafrost formation, mobility, and history,
- to understand land-to-lake interaction,
- to understand lake level changes,
- to understand sediment supply to the lake.
We study
- the cryo-lithology (cryotexture, sedimentology, hydrochemistry of ground ice, dating),
- the bioindicators (e.g. pollen, diatoms),
- the permafrost temperature field.
Cooperation
University of Cologne, Germany (Martin Melles)
University of Massachusetts, USA (Julie Brigham-Grette)
NEISRI North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute, Russia (Pavel Minyuk, Olga Glushkova)
AARI Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia (Dima Bolshiyanov, Grigory Fedorov)
AWI Bremerhaven, Germany (Frank Niessen)
AWI Potsdam, Germany (Dirk Wagner, Juliane Griess)
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany (Nobert Nowaczyk)
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, USA (Matt Nolan)
