The Role of Polar Lake Ice as a Filter for Glacial Lacustrine Sediments

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge pertaining to the interactions of lake ice and climate. Lake ice has been shown to be sensitive to climate variability through observations and modelling, and both long-term and short-term trends have been identified from ice records. Ice phenology trends have typically been associated with variations in air temperatures while ice thickness trends tend to be associated more to changes in snow cover. The role of ice cover in the regional climate is less documented and with longer ice-free seasons possible as a result of changing climate conditions, especially at higher latitudes, the effects of lakes on their surrounding climate (such as increased evaporation, lake-effect snow and thermal moderation of surrounding areas, for example) can be expected to become more prominent. The inclusion of lakes and lake ice in climate modelling is an area of increased attention in recent studies. An important step in improving predictions of ice conditions in models is the assimilation of remote sensing data in areas where in-situ data is lacking, or non-representative of the lake conditions. The ability to accurately represent ice cover on lakes will be an important step in the improvement of global circulation models, regional climate models and numerical weather forecasting.

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A Pleistocene palaeovegetation record from plant wax biomarkers from the Nachukui Formation, West Turkana, Kenya

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2015.0235 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 371 (1698) ◽

pp. 20150235 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Kevin T. Uno ◽

Pratigya J. Polissar ◽

Emma Kahle ◽

Craig Feibel ◽

Sonia Harmand ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Carbon Isotope ◽

Lacustrine Sediments ◽

Archaeological Site ◽

Depositional Environments ◽

Major Transitions ◽

Turkana Basin ◽

Isotope Data ◽

Wide Range ◽

Plant Wax

Reconstructing vegetation at hominin fossil sites provides us critical information about hominin palaeoenvironments and the potential role of climate in their evolution. Here we reconstruct vegetation from carbon isotopes of plant wax biomarkers in sediments of the Nachukui Formation in the Turkana Basin. Plant wax biomarkers were extracted from samples from a wide range of lithologies that include fluvial–lacustrine sediments and palaeosols, and therefore provide a record of vegetation from diverse depositional environments. Carbon isotope ratios from biomarkers indicate a highly dynamic vegetation structure ( ca 5–100% C 4 vegetation) from 2.3 to 1.7 Ma, with an overall shift towards more C 4 vegetation on the landscape after about 2.1 Ma. The biomarker isotope data indicate ca 25–30% more C 4 vegetation on the landscape than carbon isotope data of pedogenic carbonates from the same sequence. Our data show that the environments of early Paranthropus and Homo in this part of the Turkana Basin were primarily mixed C 3 –C 4 to C 4 -dominated ecosystems. The proportion of C 4 -based foods in the diet of Paranthropus increases through time, broadly paralleling the increase in C 4 vegetation on the landscape, whereas the diet of Homo remains unchanged. Biomarker isotope data associated with the Kokiselei archaeological site complex, which includes the site where the oldest Acheulean stone tools to date were recovered, indicate 61–97% C 4 vegetation on the landscape. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

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The role of lake size and local phenomena for monitoring ground-fast lake ice

International Journal of Remote Sensing ◽

10.1080/01431161.2018.1519281 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

pp. 832-858 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Georg Pointner ◽

Annett Bartsch ◽

Bruce C. Forbes ◽

Timo Kumpula

Keyword(s):

Lake Ice ◽

Lake Size

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The role of snow in the thickening processes of lake ice at Lake Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan

Tellus A Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography ◽

10.1080/16000870.2017.1391655 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 69 (1) ◽

pp. 1391655 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yu Ohata ◽

Takenobu Toyota ◽

Alexander D. Fraser

Keyword(s):

Lake Ice

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Fractal-Based Retrieval and Potential Driving Factors of Lake Ice Fractures of Chagan Lake, Northeast China Using Landsat Remote Sensing Images

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13214233 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (21) ◽

pp. 4233

Author(s):

Xiaohua Hao ◽

Qian Yang ◽

Xiaoguang Shi ◽

Xuemei Liu ◽

Wenfeng Huang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Cold Season ◽

Remote Sensing Images ◽

Landsat Images ◽

Lake Ice ◽

Thermal Changes ◽

Critical Attention ◽

Chagan Lake ◽

Ice Fracturing

A thorough understanding of the freshwater ice process received considerable critical attention due to increasing winter recreations and ice engineering. The development of the lake ice process of Chagan Lake was monitored using MODIS and Landsat images over eight consecutive snow seasons from October 2013 to April 2021. We derived the lake ice phenology from an eight-day time series of lake water skin temperature (LWST) provided by MODIS, including freeze-up date, break-up date, and ice cover duration. We discovered a large-scale fracture extending from northwest to southeast that repeatedly appeared on Landsat images since 1986. A novel fractal-based auto-extraction is proposed to extract the length and angle of these fractures. We also carried out a field campaign and an ice ridge was found at the southernmost part of what we observed from the images. Moreover, we explained the fracturing development by thermal changes, wind in lake, and underlying flow. Results show that the lake ice fracture is nearly perpendicular to the dominant wind direction in the cold season, which indicates the crucial role of wind on lake ice fracturing.

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