Floodplains, permafrost, cottonwood trees, and peat: What happened the last time climate warmed suddenly in arctic Alaska?

We use the stratigraphy of floodplains on Alaska’s North Slope to describe how tundra watersheds responded to climate changes over the last 15,000 calibrated years BP (15 cal ka BP). Two episodes of extremely rapid floodplain alluviation occurred during the PleistoceneeHolocene transition, one between 14 and 12.8 cal ka BP and the other between 11.5 and 9.5 cal ka BP. These aggradation episodes coincided with periods of warming in summer when cottonwood (Populus balsamifera L.) expanded its range, peatlands became established, and widespread thermokarst occurred. The two aggradation episodes were separated by a period of floodplain incision during the Younger Dryas under cooler and possibly drier conditions. At times of increasing summer warmth, melting permafrost and enhanced precipitation probably triggered widespread mass wasting on hillslopes that overwhelmed the capacity of streams to transport sediment downstream, and rapid floodplain aggradation resulted. After peatlands became widespread in the early Holocene, rivers slowly incised their valley fills. Because major pulses of sediment input were limited to times of rapid thaw and increasing moisture, many floodplains on the North Slope have been effectively decoupled from upstream hillslopes for much of the past 15,000 years. Our findings: (a) confirm the sensitivity of arctic watersheds to rapid warming in summer, (b) emphasize the importance of hillslope mass wasting in landscape-scale responses to climate change, and (c) suggest that the presence of peatland on this arctic landscape today has raised its geomorphic response threshold to climate warming compared to what it was 14,000 years ago. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.