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Glacial history reflected by geochemically constrained stratigraphic sections in the Chaudière River drainage basin of the Canadian Appalachians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2018

William W. Shilts  and
Olivier J. Caron
William W. Shilts*
Affiliation:
Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 615 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA
Olivier J. Caron
Affiliation:
Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 615 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA
*
* Corresponding author at: Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 615 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA. E-mail address: [email protected] (W.W. Shilts).
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Abstract

The Chaudière River region in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Canada is approximately 700 km north of the southernmost Pleistocene glacial deposits in New York and New Jersey. Detailed compositional analyses of glacial and non-glacial sediments from stratigraphic exposures and more than 40 boreholes drilled to bedrock provide a compositionally constrained record of glacial events, which include deposits of one Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 and two post-MIS 5 glaciations. The glacial and associated proglacial deposits rest on compositionally distinctive, preglacial saprolite that is preserved in deeper valleys. These observations constrain interpretations of the glacial/Pleistocene history of the eastern United States and Canada. The fact that there is no unequivocal evidence of pre-MIS 6 till in the Chaudière River region, while there are well-documented pre-MIS 6 glacial deposits south of there and in the American Midwest, also has major climatic implications. The Laurentide Ice Sheet and its ancestors must have been more robust in the west in the early Pleistocene and in the east most recently.

Keywords

Nickel dispersalGeochemistryAppalachian glacial stratigraphyInterglacialTillMelt-outGlacial lakesGlacial deformationSangamonLaurentide Ice Sheet
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 234 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Crown Copyright. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2018 

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