June 2025

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June 2025 | Oceanography

53

well-calcified nature of an accessory plate called a mesoplax

(Turner, 1972, 2002). The morphological examination did not

reveal any difference between the collected specimens from

Rijpfjorden and Smeerenburg. However, X. ingolfia has been

synonymized with X. nooi (Voight, 2022).

Based on dendrochronology and established reference

chronologies from Russian Larix, the tree ring patterns in

the log collected from Rijpfjorden indicate that the tree lived

during the period 1652–1904 in the Yenisei region in Siberia

(Russia). For genus and species identification, methods based on

morphology detailed in Kolar et al. (2022) and Alm (2019) were

used for this study. For the analyses of tree rings, the CATRAS

system (Computer Aided Tree ring Analyses System; see Aniol,

1983) was used. See the online supplementary material for fur­

ther description of this analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Two previous studies (Alm, 2019; Linderholm et al., 2021) con­

cluded that 87% of the driftwood examined from Svalbard con­

sisted of three genera: Pinus (pine), Picea (spruce), and Larix

(larch), with Siberian larch (Larix siberica) as the dominant

species. Although we cannot rule out that it is a different spe­

cies of Larix, we refer here to the specimen as a Siberian larch.

The exact species identification is not a key part of the find­

ings we present, nor of the interpretation of the results. The

Linderholm et  al. (2021) study was carried out in the south­

western part of Spitsbergen, in a region where coastal surface

currents flow northward from the southern tip of Svalbard.

Irrespective of which species this is, there are no trees grow­

ing on Svalbard. Also, surface currents in our study’s part of the

Arctic flow west. Hence, for a log to end up in Rijpfjorden, the

FIGURE 1. Map of the Arctic with sea ice, ocean currents, Transpolar Drift (TPD), and projected drift patterns of Fram, the Siberian larch found in

Rijpfjorden on Nordaustlandet (Svalbard), and an Ice-Tethered Observatory (ITO) deployed at the North Pole in 2022. The white area indicates multiyear

sea ice, and white/blue stripes the seasonal ice zone. Black dots show where USS Jeannette sank in 1881 and where parts of the wreckage were found

in 1884. The green line indicates the suggested route of transport for the Siberian larch found in Rijpfjorden, the purple line indicates the drift trajec­

tory of Fram from 1893 to 1896, and the red line indicates the seven-month drift trajectory of the ITO in 2022. The thick light red arrow at the bottom of

the figure tracks the northward-flowing West Spitsbergen Current that brings warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean, the thick white arrow indicates

the TPD transporting sea ice out into the Fram Strait, and the thick turquoise arrow follows cold Arctic water flowing out of the Arctic Ocean along the

east coast of Greenland. Left inserts, from top to bottom, show part of the log found in Rijpfjorden, a cross section of the log with traces of wood-boring

molluscs and several individuals of X. nooi, and a close-up of two specimens of X. nooi. Right inserts, top to bottom, depict USS Jeannette, Fram frozen

into sea ice, and a forest with Siberian larch.

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