Arctic ecosystems have proven most sensitive to climate and environmental changes that are particularily well recorded in lake sedimentary archives. Such records are still scarce from the most remote high latitude regions although having progressively increased in number recently. The diatoms from Arctic lakes are known among the most effective tools in reconstructing past climatic and environmental variability. In formerly (and presently) glaciated regions they also help reconstructing relative sea-level changes resulted from glacioisostatic rebound.
In this study, the diatom stratigraphy, as well as physical and geochemical proxies was used to reconstruct the Holocene history of one of the small lakes located in Peary Land, northernmost Greenland, to decipher the environmental changes of the past. The diatom record of Bliss Lake (83°35'14''N 28°21'12''W, 17 m a.s.l.) reveals three main stages of the lake's development which is corroborated with other data. In the earliest stage dated back to the Early Holocene, the diatom record suggests a proglacial environment with meltwaters freshening a marine bay. After the glacier retreat around 9,400 cal yr BP, increased abundances of meso- and especially polyhalobous diatoms suggest that marine conditions became established in the basin of Bliss Lake. A rapid increase in the freshwater diatoms abundance and a respective drop in marine taxa starting from 7,560 cal yr BP mark the lake¿s isolation from the sea as a result of the glacio-isostatic uplift.