Pollen analysis of buried glacier ice and sediments

This dataset presents a compilation of sporo-pollinic taxa detected in glacier ice buried in the permafrost of Bylot Island. The buried ice was sampled using an earth auger equipped with an 8-cm diamond carbide core barrel. Pollen extraction was performed at Biogeography Laboratory (Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada) on seven subsamples obtained from the 140-cm ice core sampled from the buried basal ice exposure. Standard pollen processing procedures were then followed (Faegri and Iversen, 1989). Each sample was sieved (15 and 22 um) and subjected to successive chemical treatments with HCl (removal of carbonates), KOH (deflocculates the sample and breaks down organics), HF (removal of clays) and acetolysis solution (removal of cellulose). Samples also underwent heavy-liquid separation using sodium polytungstate (SPT) to assist in the removal of heavy minerals. Lycopodium spore tablets were added to allow for the calculation of total pollen and spore concentrations following Stockmarr (1971). The residue was then mounted in glycerin and analyzed under light microscope at 400x magnification. The microscopic analyses revealed sufficiently high pollen concentration and sufficiently good preservation of pollen grains to allow the counting of 190 to 260 pollen grains per sample. Pollen was identified using the Biogeography Laboratory (University of Montreal) reference pollen collection, as well as published pollen and spore atlases (McAndrews et al., 1973; Moore and Webb, 1980).