The Circum-Arctic Sediment CArbon DatabasE (CASCADE) curates data on concentrations of organic carbon (OC) and total nitrogen (TN), OC isotopes (δ¹³C, Δ¹⁴C), as well as of terrigenous biomarkers and other sediment geochemical and physical properties of surface sediments and sediment cores in the Arctic Ocean.
For surface sediments, this first public version of CASCADE includes more than 4000 oceanographic stations with OC concentrations, 2300 records with TN concentrations, 1500 stations with δ¹³C ratios, about 270 stations with Δ¹⁴C values and over 650 records with quantified terrigenous biomarkers (high molecular weight n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and lignin phenols).
Over 300 sediment cores complement the dataset of surface sediments across the Arctic Ocean by adding another 10500 observations of OC concentrations, over 4700 TN concentrations and over 2100 δ¹³C values to CASCADE.
The data is freely available and will be managed and continuously updated with newly published and contributed data over the foreseeable future at the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University.
CASCADE enables synoptic analysis of OC biogeochemical cycling in the Arctic Ocean and facilitates a wide array of future empirical and modelling studies of the Arctic carbon cycle, which is tightly linked to the climate system and vulnerable to climate change. Among others, CASCADE permits studies of OC sources to Arctic Ocean sediments and thus provides insight in land-ocean transport of terrestrial OC from thawing Arctic soils and permafrost systems.
