Tidal Mixing, Polynas, and Human Settlement in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

This paper presents new data on the linkages among tidal mixing, polynya formation and human settlement in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Both tidal mixing fronts and polynyas are regions of enhanced biological productivity relative to the surrounding ocean. Any area where a tidal mixing front exists in the summer and a polynya reliably occurs in the winter should have enhanced biological productivity year round. The distribution of Holocene-era archaeological sites appears to be coupled to such locations indicating that these ecological hot spots were critical to the human settlement of the archipelago. At the Pan-arctic scale, human settlement of the archipelago was comparatively late (ca. 4500 BP), suggesting that ecological and/or oceanographic conditions conducive to human occupation of the region may have been a relatively recent phenomenon, possibly linked to wider mid-Holocene environmental changes.