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Abstract <p>Alpine snowpacks provide valuable archives of atmospheric deposition, yet the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus remain underrepresented in high-altitude geochemical monitoring networks. This study investigated the hydrochemical composition of fresh snow, annual snowpack, and perennial snowfields across an altitudinal transect from 1838 to 2857&#xa0;m a.s.l. within the Caucasian State Nature Biosphere Reserve to characterize depositional sources and evaluate how snow archive type and landscape structure influence geochemical signal preservation. Major ions were determined by titrimetric and turbidimetric methods, while trace elements and rare earth elements were quantified by ICP-AES and ICP-MS. Complementary soil and vegetation samples assessed landscape controls on elemental accumulation. Marine-associated ions, including Na, Mg, Cl, and Sr, remained detectable across the transect at sites approximately 50&#xa0;km inland from the Black Sea, indicating orographic transport and scavenging of maritime aerosols during south-westerly circulation. Forest canopy interception reduced sub-canopy snowpack elemental concentrations by approximately 70 to 80 percent relative to open alpine environments, establishing montane forest sites as the most conservative local deposition baseline. Rare earth element concentrations exceeded upper crustal Clarke values by factors of 2 to 5 and corresponded to REE-enriched Paleogene volcanic lithologies of the Mzymta basin, supporting their use as robust lithogenic tracers. Because fresh snow, annual snowpack, and perennial snowfields preserve atmospheric chemistry over fundamentally different temporal scales, they cannot be treated as interchangeable monitoring archives. A spatially distributed annual snowpack sampling design anchored by montane forest reference sites is recommended for integrated seasonal atmospheric monitoring in topographically complex mountain terrain.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>

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Greater Caucasus alpine snowpacks as atmospheric archives: marine aerosol transport, forest filtering, and REE lithogenic fingerprinting

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月21日

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  • Lalita Zakharikhina,
  • Sergey Shevelev,
  • Georgy Vareldzhyan,
  • Polina Lesnikova,
  • Vadim Kerimzade

摘要

Abstract

Alpine snowpacks provide valuable archives of atmospheric deposition, yet the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus remain underrepresented in high-altitude geochemical monitoring networks. This study investigated the hydrochemical composition of fresh snow, annual snowpack, and perennial snowfields across an altitudinal transect from 1838 to 2857 m a.s.l. within the Caucasian State Nature Biosphere Reserve to characterize depositional sources and evaluate how snow archive type and landscape structure influence geochemical signal preservation. Major ions were determined by titrimetric and turbidimetric methods, while trace elements and rare earth elements were quantified by ICP-AES and ICP-MS. Complementary soil and vegetation samples assessed landscape controls on elemental accumulation. Marine-associated ions, including Na, Mg, Cl, and Sr, remained detectable across the transect at sites approximately 50 km inland from the Black Sea, indicating orographic transport and scavenging of maritime aerosols during south-westerly circulation. Forest canopy interception reduced sub-canopy snowpack elemental concentrations by approximately 70 to 80 percent relative to open alpine environments, establishing montane forest sites as the most conservative local deposition baseline. Rare earth element concentrations exceeded upper crustal Clarke values by factors of 2 to 5 and corresponded to REE-enriched Paleogene volcanic lithologies of the Mzymta basin, supporting their use as robust lithogenic tracers. Because fresh snow, annual snowpack, and perennial snowfields preserve atmospheric chemistry over fundamentally different temporal scales, they cannot be treated as interchangeable monitoring archives. A spatially distributed annual snowpack sampling design anchored by montane forest reference sites is recommended for integrated seasonal atmospheric monitoring in topographically complex mountain terrain.

Graphical abstract