Climate, Ecosystems and Human Society as Recorded in the First Ice Core Extracted from the Tyrolean Alps

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

This project will extract ice-cores from a remote Alpine glacier in Italy and secure them in freezers at the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio to enable future research on paleo-environments. As globally averaged surface temperatures increase it is important to consider how physical and human systems respond to and interact with climate. There is a lack of paleo-environmental information from remote sites such as high altitude glaciers that are essential to link physical and human systems. South Tyrol is a unique area in the European Alps with a very rich human history. Its highest glacier, the Alto dell'Ortles (3905 meters) constitutes an important observational point to study past changes in climate, ecosystems and human society. This part of Tyrol is characterized by the lowest precipitation rate in the European Alps and thus its glaciers are likely to contain ice histories older than those from other Alpine locations. The potential of Mt. Ortles ice field has not been explored, mainly due to the difficult logistical access. Mt. Ortles is located only about 30 km from where the famous 5,200 year old Tyrolean Ice Man emerged from an ablating ice field. This discovery suggests that the last few decades were the warmest on record over the last 5,200 years in this region of the Alps. Indeed glaciers are rapidly shrinking in this area and it is a high priority to retrieve this unique paleo-environmental glacial archive from Mt. Ortles before it is lost. This salvage mission will ensure the possibility of obtaining the preserved information with the potential to highlight relationships regulating climate, ecosystems and human society in the Tyrolean Alps during the last millennium. The ice cores have the potential to advance the understanding of past and future changes in climate, vegetation, and land use in a region of the Alps. The Mt. Ortles ice core histories will fill an important gap in the spatial distribution of ice cores retrieved from the European Alps. Ultimately their records will offer a unique yardstick to be compared with other European records and those from low-latitude sites where records of climate, ecosystems, and human societies have been extracted.