Retreating cold-based ice caps are exposing dead tundra plants still in growth position, indicating that many of the glaciers and ice caps on Baffin Island are frozen to their beds, preserving the landscape. Radiocarbon ages of these recently exposed plants date the last time ice advanced over that location, killing the plant. Radiocarbon ages from across southeastern Baffin Island tell a story of Holocene re-expansion of glaciers in the region. 

Since plants are readily removed from the landscape after exposure, surviving multiple burial-exposure episodes is rare in most cases. However, in some instances, preservation after exposure provides a transect of plant ages away from an ice margin (see photo to right). This transect provides a direct record of ice margin growth and demise through time from which the associated climate trends can be extracted through modeling experiments (Pendleton et al., 2017).