Environmental assessment from the sedimentary record of high-latitude fiords

The sedimentary record of fiords at high latitude where global change may be occurring earliest and will be greatest has the potential for assessment of environmental change at both low resolution (the scale of millennia) and high resolution (decadal to less than daily). Unlike the lacustrine record which has been used very successfully in these studies, the sedimentary processes and thus the sedimentary deposits of fiords differ (1) in the role of salt water in inhibiting mixing and promoting flocculation, and through the role of sea-ice, (2) in the exchange of mass and energy with the much larger ocean beyond, and (3) in the role of benthic biota in the sedimentary environment. The work reviewed in this paper shows that fiord sediments are being used to assess sedimentary and oceanic processes, as well as glacial, periglacial and geomorphic history, and that they are important proxies for long-term climate and hydrology. Recommendations for advancing this work include long-term monitoring of conditions in fiords and their drainage basins so that the transfer relations can be more solidly constructed from the proxy of fiord sediment. Integration of results from fiords in opposite polar latitudes, and among proxies especially from lacustrine and ice-core records will produce valuable insights. Assessment of the range of conditions in fiords from the most polar to temperate regions is important to building models of their processes and understanding of the paleoenvironmental signals that can be interpreted from each type.