Rapid sea-level rise and Holocene climate in the Chukchi Sea

Three new sediment cores from the Chukchi Sea preserve a record of local paleoenvironment, sedimentation, and flooding of the Chukchi Shelf ( 50 m) by glacial-eustatic sea-level rise. Radiocarbon dates on foraminifera provide the first marine evidence that the sea invaded Hope Valley (southern Chukchi Sea, 53 m) as early as 12 ka. The lack of significant sediment accumulation since ca. 7 ka in Hope Valley, southeastern Chukchi Shelf, is consistent with decreased sediment supply and fluvial discharge to the shelf as deglaciation of Alaska concluded. Abundant benthic foraminifera from a site west of Barrow Canyon indicate that surface waters were more productive 4–6 ka, and this productivity varied on centennial time scales. An offshore companion to this core contains a 20 m record of the Holocene. These results show that carefully selected core sites from the western Arctic Ocean can have a temporal resolution equal to the best cores from other regions, and that these sites can be exploited for high-resolution studies of the paleoenvironment.