Provenance analysis of Late Pleistocene Arctic glacial marine and lacustrine sediments – implications for deglaciation dynamics

In this PhD thesis, marine sediment samples from the East Siberian Sea, the central Arctic Ocean, and the Baltic Sea were studied with the aim of investigating the interactions between the melting of ice sheets and sediment deposition in the Northern Hemisphere. The main objective of this work was to determine the sediment source areas and transport mechanisms and routes in the De Long trough mouth fan, the Lomonosov Ridge, and the Landsort Deep. The studied samples were recovered by deep-sea drilling during international research campaigns. The heavy mineral analysis from the De Long trough mount fan was used in the study of glacial phases of the Eastern Siberian continental margin. The clay mineral compositions and isotopic concentrations of the sediments deposited in the central part of the Arctic Ocean, the Lomonosov Ridge, were used to evaluate different phases of ice sheet retreat and melting. Sedimentological and clay mineralogical study of the samples from the Landsort depression enabled a more detailed interpretation of the Baltic Sea’s ice lake phase in the time interval ~13500–10500 years ago. This study reflects well the variation in the retreat of the Fennoscandian continental ice sheet, i.e., two lake drainages as well as a stagnation period during the retreat of the ice sheet.