Permafrost of the east Siberian Arctic shelf and coastal lowlands

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Abstract

In the past decade, within the framework of joint Russian–German marine and terrestrial studies on the Arctic shelf, New Siberian Islands, and coastal lowlands of the Laptev and East Siberian seas, fundamentally new data have been obtained on terrestrial and offshore permafrost in this area. Field and laboratory investigations supplemented with numerical modeling and generalization of the results of numerous geological surveys, exploratory works, and scientific researches performed in previous years have made it possible to revise existing knowledge about the distribution, thickness, physical state, and history of development of terrestrial and offshore permafrost in the East Siberian part of the Arctic. The main results of these studies and their interpretation are discussed in this paper.

Introduction

The shelf and coastal lowlands of the Laptev and East Siberian seas (Fig. 1) represent a virtually flat accumulative plain. The largest part of the shelf has sea depths of less than 60 m. The shelf edge (transition to the continental slope) lies at a distance of 400–800 km from the modern shoreline; sea depths in this area range from 80 to 100 m.

Section snippets

Relic offshore permafrost: methods and the main results of its study

Up to the beginning of the 1990s, it was generally believed that relic offshore permafrost had a limited distribution within the shelf of the Laptev and East Siberian seas. These notions were analyzed in detail by Gavrilov et al. (2001). It was also believed that the thickness of submarine (offshore) relic permafrost was considerably lower than that of permafrost within coastal lowlands shown on the Geocryological Map of the USSR, 1:2.5M scale (1996).

In the 1990s, the results of joint

The concept of shelf development in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene

As mentioned above, the table of relic offshore permafrost has an uneven topography. Within sandy shoals at sea depths up to 20 m, permafrost with ground ice is overlain by a relatively thin (2–3 m) layer of unconsolidated cryotic sediments, predominantly of marine genesis. At the same time, there are many places within the inner part of the shelf (at sea depths up to 30–40 m) and in the straits separating the New Siberian Islands, the permafrost table lies at a depth of 100 m and more from the sea

Conclusions

  • (1)

    Relic offshore permafrost exists within the vast Arctic shelf in Eastern Siberia. This permafrost has a continuous character within the inner part of the shelf (to sea depths of about 60 m) and a discontinuous character at greater sea depths (down to the transition from the shelf to the continental slope).

  • (2)

    The average thickness of permafrost within most of the shelf is estimated at 300–350 m; maximum values (500 m and more) are typical of the shoals near the Kotel’nyi Island.

  • (3)

    The thawing of relic

Acknowledgments

This study has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant nos. 97-05-64206 and 00-05-64430), joint Russian–German programs “Laptev Sea System” and “Laptev Sea System 2000,” OSL, and the National Science Foundation (USA) Grant no. 0PP 99 86 826. The authors express their special gratitude for constant support and valuable scientific consultations to Drs. S.S. Drachev, I.A. Dmitrenko, and A.V. Sher.

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