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The course of permafrost degradation depends on climate, vegetation, disturbance, and excess ground-ice content and distribution, which vary over time. Our understanding of possible future landscape trajectories under climate warming can be improved by observing past responses to changes in these critical drivers. Using a novel combination of lake-sediment records, field observations and LiDAR imagery, we reconstructed the late-Quaternary history of the marginal upland of the Yukon Flats, interior Alaska, a loess-mantled region with massive ground ice and numerous thermokarst lakes. Two lakes formed ~11,000-12,000 cal yr BP through inferred thermokarst processes. Charcoal in basal sediments indicates fire may have influenced lake initiation. In a third, older basin, major input of terrigenous silt occurred before or during this time. At all studied lakes, sedimentation has been stable through much of the Holocene. Meso-scale topographic features that are obscured by forest are revealed by LiDAR images to include widespread linear corrugations cutting across the uplands, deep gullies, and other features resembling lake drainage channels. These imply past dramatic surface-sediment mobilization. Lakes intersect the corrugations, indicating that the mobile phase occurred no later than the earliest Holocene. Several interacting factors may have been critical in first enhancing, then slowing, this activity. High summer insolation, increasing moisture, initially sparse vegetation, then development of woody cover and increase in fire disturbance likely combined to generate rapid and deep thaw of glacial-age permafrost. Initial lake lowering and generation of steep local topography favoring drying of uplands, a summer water deficit, and early-Holocene establishment of evergreen forest cover and consequent surface insulation likely combined to shift the system to a near-quiescent state (the system is not entirely inactive today: a partial lake drainage event was observed in 2

Ecosystems across the globe are threatened by climate change and human activities. New rapid survey approaches for monitoring biodiversity would greatly advance assessment and understanding of these threats. Taking advantage of next-generation DNA sequencing, we tested an approach we call metabarcoding: high-throughput and simultaneous taxa identification based on a very short (usually

The existence of the jerk vector is investigated in projectile motion under gravity. The jerk vector is zero in the absence of air resistance, but comes into life when velocity-dependent air drag is present. The jerk vector is calculated when the air resistance is proportional to the velocity. It is found that the jerk vector maintains a constant sense in the upward and forward direction, with its magnitude attenuated exponentially as a function of time., La existencia del vector reflejo es investigada en el movimiento de proyectiles en virtud de la gravedad. El vector reflejo es cero en ausencia de la resistencia del aire, pero vuelve a la vida cuando la resistencia del aire dependiente de la velocidad está presente. El vector reflejo es calculado cuando la resistencia del aire es proporcional a la velocidad. Se ha encontrado que el vector reflejo mantiene una sensación constante en la dirección hacia arriba y hacia delante, con su magnitud atenuada exponencialmente en función del tiempo.

As the planet cooled from peak warmth in the early Cenozoic, extensive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets developed by 2.6 Ma ago, leading to changes in the circulation of both the atmosphere and oceans. From not, vert, similar2.6 to not, vert, similar1.0 Ma ago, ice sheets came and went about every 41 ka, in pace with cycles in the tilt of Earth’s axis, but for the past 700 ka, glacial cycles have been longer, lasting not, vert, similar100 ka, separated by brief, warm interglaciations, when sea level and ice volumes were close to present. The cause of the shift from 41 ka to 100 ka glacial cycles is still debated. During the penultimate interglaciation, not, vert, similar130 to not, vert, similar120 ka ago, solar energy in summer in the Arctic was greater than at any time subsequently. As a consequence, Arctic summers were not, vert, similar5 °C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent. With the loss of land ice, sea level was about 5 m higher than present, with the extra melt coming from both Greenland and Antarctica as well as small glaciers. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked not, vert, similar21 ka ago, when mean annual temperatures over parts of the Arctic were as much as 20 °C lower than at present. Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) not, vert, similar11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1–3 °C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present. Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially smaller than their 20t

The spatio-temporal pattern of peak Holocene warmth (Holocene thermal maximum, HTM) is traced over 140 sites across the Western Hemisphere of the Arctic (0–180°W; north of ∼60°N). Paleoclimate inferences based on a wide variety of proxy indicators provide clear evidence for warmer-than-present conditions at 120 of these sites. At the 16 terrestrial sites where quantitative estimates have been obtained, local HTM temperatures (primarily summer estimates) were on average 1.6±0.8°C higher than present (approximate average of the 20th century), but the warming was time-transgressive across the western Arctic. As the precession-driven summer insolation anomaly peaked 12–10 ka (thousands of calendar years ago), warming was concentrated in northwest North America, while cool conditions lingered in the northeast. Alaska and northwest Canada experienced the HTM between ca 11 and 9 ka, about 4000 yr prior to the HTM in northeast Canada. The delayed warming in Quebec and Labrador was linked to the residual Laurentide Ice Sheet, which chilled the region through its impact on surface energy balance and ocean circulation. The lingering ice also attests to the inherent asymmetry of atmospheric and oceanic circulation that predisposes the region to glaciation and modulates the pattern of climatic change. The spatial asymmetry of warming during the HTM resembles the pattern of warming observed in the Arctic over the last several decades. Although the two warmings are described at different temporal scales, and the HTM was additionally affected by the residual Laurentide ice, the similarities suggest there might be a preferred mode of variability in the atmospheric circulation that generates a recurrent pattern of warming under positive radiative forcing. Unlike the HTM, however, future warming will not be counterbalanced by the cooling effect of a residual North American ice sheet.