Characteristics of wave-built sedimentary archives in Buor Khaya Bay (71°N/130°E), Siberian Arctic, Russia
Prograded sequences of beach deposits may preserve valuable information on the long-term variability of key parameters driving centennial to millennial shoreline evolution. Buor Khaya Bay, NE Siberian Arctic, is located at the transition between the Verkhoyansk mountain range and the Arctic Ocean and is one of the few places along the Russian arctic coast, where wide beach-ridge systems exist. Two field sites were visited during an expedition in August 2017 in order to obtain baseline information to assess the potential of the systems for the reconstruction of Holocene sea level and wave climate. The inner parts of the bay are ice-free for three to four months during the short boreal summer and water levels are strongly influenced by storm surges. The wave forcing of the system is a function of the duration of ice-free conditions, wind direction and fetch across the open sea surface. The studied systems are composed of several sets of beach ridges located in elongated embayments within a cliffed bedrock shoreline. The local morphological arrangement of landforms and the characteristics of the beach deposits evidence (1) periods of continuous progradation, and (2) unconformities associated with changes in ridge orientation, suggesting fluctuations in the directional components of energy supply and sediment delivery. The project is at an early stage of investigation and will be continued during summer 2018.