Human activities can greatly affect the chemical and biological composition of High Arctic lakes that otherwise receive only sparse inputs from their watersheds and airsheds. This paper reports a study of three High Arctic waterbodies in which wastewater from an airport was released over the span of several decades. Using sediment cores from these waterbodies, we reconstructed the history of wastewater inputs using a multiproxy approach consisting of sterols, stanols, metals, and stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen. This multi-proxy approach showed good concordance between δ¹⁵N, coprostanol (a stanol specific to human faecal sources), cholesterol, and cholestanol, which tracked the known history of human wastewater deposition to this High Arctic environment. Concentrations of plant derived sterols, such as campesterol and sitosterol, increased at the time of wastewater input, presumably due to increased plant growth stimulated by wastewater nutrients. Metal(loid)s normalized to titanium showed that copper and lead tracked the input of wastewater into one pond (R-12), while arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, and zinc increased more than 15 years after the onset of wastewater input. These results demonstrated the ability of sterols and stanols to reconstruct the historical presence of humans in High Arctic locations within the last 80 years. They provided compelling evidence that these paleolimnological approaches may be useful to track the occupation of Arctic peoples beyond the last century.

人类活动会极大地影响高北极湖泊的化学和生物成分，否则这些湖泊只会从其流域和空域获得稀疏的投入。本文报告了对三个高北极水体的研究，这些水体在几十年的时间里从一个机场释放了废水。利用这些水体中的沉积物核，我们采用了由多种固醇，甾烷醇，金属以及碳和氮的稳定同位素组成的多代理方法来重建废水输入的历史。这种多代理方式显示δ之间良好的一致性¹⁵N，前列腺素（一种特定于人类粪便的甾烷醇），胆固醇和胆固醇，可追溯到人类在高北极环境中沉积废水的已知历史。废水输入时，植物衍生固醇（例如菜油甾醇和谷固醇）的浓度增加，这大概是由于废水养分刺激植物生长的速度增加。归一化为钛的金属（类）表明，铜和铅跟踪了废水进入一个池塘（R-12）的过程，而砷，镉，铬，镍和锌的添加量在废水进入后超过15年就增加了。这些结果证明了甾醇和甾烷醇在过去80年中重建人类在北极地区的历史存在的能力。