The dataset presented was used to reconstruct the origin of terrestrial material deposited during the last 30 thousand years on the upper continental slope of the Svalbard archipelago, north of Nordaustlandet (81°16'N, 26°13'E). The material analyzed consisted in muddy sediments from the 4.66 m long gravity core HH11-09GC, retrieved at a water depth of 488 m in September 2011 during a scientific cruise of the R/V Helmer Hanssen. Data on isoprenoid (i-), hydroxylated (OH-), and branched (br-) glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) were obtained extracting with organic solvents about 1.5 g of dry sediment of 77 samples according to the method reported in Tesi et al. (2021). Chromatographic analyses to identify and quantify each compound of interest were performed on an Agilent 1260 Infinity II ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) system, consisting of a G1712B binary pump, a G7129A vial sampler with integrated sample thermostat, a G7116A multicolumn thermostat, and a G6125C single quadrupole mass spectrometer with an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) ion source. Sediment extraction was performed at the organic geochemistry laboratories of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna (Italy), while chromatographic investigations were carried out at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) laboratory in Bremerhaven (Germany). Data on GDGTs were used to gain insights on the origin of the terrestrial material delivered on the study site. Additionally, we calculated indices based on brGDGTs to identify the production of bacterial tetraether lipids in marine environments.Tesi, T., Muschitiello, F., Mollenhauer, G., Miserocchi, S., Langone, L., Ceccarelli, C., et al. (2021). Rapid Atlantification along the Fram Strait at the beginning of the 20th century. Science Advances, 7(48). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946

The research is part of the Programma di Ricerche in Artico, project PAST-HEAT (PermAfroSt Thawing: what Happened to the largest tErrestrial cArbon pool during lasT deglaciation?)