To better understand Southern Greenland’s history, an earth
sciences team from UMass Amherst recently traveled to the large, rugged island
to obtain sediment samples and construct a theory for how climate changes have impacted settlement there.
“In general we know more about what has happened in the Arctic
and up on the ice cap … but when you come down to the coast, there’s not very
much known about this area,” said Raymond Bradley, Ph.D., director of the Climate
System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and study
leader.
Geoscience graduate students Greg DeWet and Daniel Miller
assisted Bradley. While stationed in Greenland, they dined on reindeer — and
whale, which Miller termed “interesting” — and enjoyed the opportunity to
interact with residents and learn their history. Vikings settled the land, with
remains of Norse farms still in evidence today.
“They raised sheep and cattle from about 985 A.D. to the
early 1400s,” said Bradley. “The question is: what was the climate like and did
it change enough to cause the settlers to abandon the sheep farms?”
By pulling up sediment core samples lifted from the lakes of
southern Greenland, the scientists can “look back in time.” Bradley said a 1.5-meter sediment sample should enable the team to create a profile of the
past 3000 years, by looking for organic bio-markers produced by bacteria and algae
that denote chemical composition changes in response to temperature.
The
researchers
expect to
be able to reconstruct temperature change and hopefully what the climate was
like during the Viking era, with plans to create a website devoted to
North Atlantic climate change in the near future.
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