Rutgers Blogg

 

Forskarna skriver “Frozen samples of soil and vegetation taken from below Longyearbereen were radiocarbon dating (14C). With a probability of 95.4% the period of vegetation growth ended at 1104 cal yr BP. This is a minimum age for the advance of the glacier Longyearbreen over the study site, killing but not destroying the vegetation. Since then the glacier has advanced an additional 2 km down valley, thereby lowering the altitude of the glacier terminus from about 450 m a.s.l. to 250 m a.s.l. At the time of the advance across the study site the glacier length was about 3 km. The modern length is about 5 km, meaning that the glacier Longyearbreen still is about 2000 m longer than is was about 1100 years ago”.  (Humlum et al. 2005). “Late-Holocene glacier growth in Svalbard, documented by subglacial relict egetation and living soil microbes” publicerat i “The Holocene 15,3 (2005) pp. 396/407”