Abstract
The region around the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the
fastest warming regions of the world, a situation that will lead to
widespread changes in permafrost state, local hydrological cycles and
biological activity. Further, it is located in the path of the southern
westerly winds, one of the poorest-understood components of the global
climatic system. The sedimentary archives in the lakes from the ice-free
regions on this region host a yet untapped wealth of information on the
past changes and links between the regional climatic, hydrologic and
biological systems. Especially important are the stable isotope
compositions of these sediments, but to understand how they record these
changes, an in-depth knowledge of their links to present-day conditions
is required. We present here the first study of the stable isotope
composition of the surface waters in the ice-free southern peninsulas of
King George Island, Antarctica. Our results suggest that a clear
separation of the various water bodies (permafrost, snow, meltwater,
lakes) based on the stable isotope composition of the water is possible,
allowing for future studies aiming to understand (changing) feeding
behavior of terrestrial fauna. Further, water in lakes on a W-E transect
have distinct stable isotope composition, leading to the possibility of
studying the past changes in the strength and dynamics of the westerly
winds in the region.