Multiple generations of interglacial lake sediment preserved beneath the Laurentide ice sheet

It is generally assumed that regions glaciated by continental ice sheets offer little promise for long paleoenvironmental records due to erosional processes associated with glaciation. We show that beneath portions of the northeastern Laurentide Ice Sheet, characterized by cold-based glaciation, sed...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geology (Boulder) 2007-10, Vol.35 (10), p.887-890
Main Authors: Briner, J. P, Axford, Y, Forman, S. L, Miller, G. H, Wolfe, A. P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
absolute age
Arctic Archipelago
Baffin Island
C-14
Canada
carbon
Cenozoic
climate change
Clyde Foreland
cosmogenic elements
dates
Eastern Canada
erosion
exposure age
Freshwater
geochronology
Geological time
glacial erosion
glacial geology
glaciated terrains
Glaciers
ice sheets
interglacial environment
isotopes
lacustrine environment
Lake CF8
lake sediments
Lakes
Laurentide ice sheet
luminescence
Nunavut
optically stimulated luminescence
paleoclimatology
paleoenvironment
Paleontology
Pleistocene
Quaternary
Quaternary geology
radioactive isotopes
Sedimentation & deposition
sediments
Soil erosion
terrestrial environment
upper Pleistocene
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Summary:It is generally assumed that regions glaciated by continental ice sheets offer little promise for long paleoenvironmental records due to erosional processes associated with glaciation. We show that beneath portions of the northeastern Laurentide Ice Sheet, characterized by cold-based glaciation, sediment sequences representing multiple interglaciations have been preserved within extant lake basins. Radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating confirm the antiquity of the sediments, thereby extending the terrestrial paleoenvironmental record of the Canadian Arctic by hundreds of thousands of years. The lake sediment record presented here corroborates numerous recent cosmogenic exposure dating studies indicating complex patterns of erosion beneath polar ice sheets. It also demonstrates that the presence of intact interglacial sediments does not demand unglaciated refugia. Similarly ancient sediments may be preserved in many regions formerly covered by Pleistocene ice sheets.
ISSN:0091-7613
1943-2682
DOI:10.1130/G23812A.1