ORIGINAL PAPER A multiproxy evaluation of Holocene environmental change from Lake Igaliku, South Greenland Charly Massa • Bianca B. Perren • E ´ milie Gauthier • Vincent Bichet • Christophe Petit • Herve ´ Richard Received: 15 September 2011 / Accepted: 27 February 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract This is the first integrated multiproxy study to investigate climate, catchment evolution and lake ecology in South Greenland. A 4-m-long sedi- mentary sequence from Lake Igaliku (618 00 0 N, 458 26 0 W, 15 m asl) documents major environmental and climatic changes in south Greenland during the last 10 ka. The chronology is based on a 210 Pb and 137 Cs profile and 28 radiocarbon dates. The paleoenviron- mental history is interpreted on the basis of magnetic susceptibility, grain size, total organic carbon, total nitrogen and sulphur, sedimentation rates, pollen, and diatom assemblages. The basal radiocarbon date at ca. 10 cal ka BP provides a minimum age for the deglaciation of the basin, which is followed by *500 years of high sedimentation rates in a glacio- marine environment. After the glacio-isostatic emer- gence of the basin ca. 9.5 cal ka BP, limnological and terrestrial proxies suggests early warmth, which may have been interrupted by a cold, dry and windy period between 8.6 and 8.1 cal ka BP. A dry and windy event *5.3–4.8 cal ka BP preceded the Neoglacial transi- tion at Lake Igaliku, which is characterized by a shift toward moister and perhaps cooler conditions *4.8 cal ka BP, causing major changes in terrestrial and aquatic ecological conditions. Significant cooling is documented after *3 cal ka BP. Since *1 cal ka BP the climatic-driven changes were overprinted by the human influence of Norse and recent agriculture. Keywords South Greenland  Lake sediments  8.2 event  Holocene thermal maximum  Neoglacial  Norse Introduction The Arctic is an important area for understanding environmental responses to climate change, not only in the past but also as it relates to the future. Atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns have modulated the spatio-temporal response to declining insolation dur- ing the Holocene (Kaufman et al. 2004), but our knowledge of regional differences remains patchy. The southern coast of Greenland is a strategic location for understanding the environmental response to forcing mechanisms not only in relation to the nearby Green- land Ice Sheet, but also to adjacent North Atlantic oceanographic currents and dynamics (Nørgaard- Pedersen and Mikkelsen 2009). Understanding This is one of 18 papers published in a special issue edited by Darrell Kaufman, and dedicated to reconstructing Holocene climate and environmental change from Arctic lake sediments. C. Massa (&)  B. B. Perren  E ´ . Gauthier  V. Bichet  H. Richard University of Franche-Comte ´, UMR CNRS 6249 Chrono- environnement, 16 route de Gray, 25030 Besanc ¸on cedex, France e-mail: charly.massa@edu.univ-fcomte.fr C. Petit University of Paris 1 Panthe ´on-Sorbonne, UMR CNRS 7041 ArScAn, 3 rue Michelet, 75006 Paris, France 123 J Paleolimnol DOI 10.1007/s10933-012-9594-5