PALEOENVIRONMENTS OF THE CANADIAN HIGH ARCTIC DERIVED FROM POLLEN ANDPLANT MACROFOSSILS - PROBLEMS AND POTENTIALS

Analyses of peat sections, lake sediments and ice cores provide inform ation about Late-Quaternary arctic environments. Palynomorphs and plan t macrofossils from each of these three types of sediments record diff erent aspects of the environment with particular spatial and temporal scales of resolution. In the Arctic, the limits to the interpretation of past environments are particularly significant. Problems of low pol len concentrations, long-distance transport, strati graphic inversions and contamination by fossils from older deposits are more serious in this region due to the biogeographic context that characterizes these high latitudes and influences the particular ecological and geomorphol ogical processes. However, recent work has shown that past environment s can be reconstructed from evidence preserved in high arctic sediment s and ice cores, if these problems are taken into account before their interpretation.