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Late Wisconsin History North of the Giants Range, Northern Minnesota, Inferred from Complex Stratigraphy☆

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Svante Björck
Svante Björck*
Affiliation:
Department of Quaternary Geology, Lund University, Tornav 13, S-223, 63 Lund, Sweden Limnological Research Center, Pillsbury Hall, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 USA
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Abstract

In an area north of the Giants Range in northeastern Minnesota the late Wisconsin glacial and extraglacial lithostratigraphy shows that, apart from one occurrence of red clayey till, the deposits can be related to the deglaciation of the Rainy Lobe, the margin of which retreated northward, leaving debris-rich ice behind. By a combination of pollen stratigraphy, lithostratigraphy, and chronostratigraphy of lake sediments in this area, together with multivariate numerical analyses of the data set, a “hiatus” stratigraphy was set up. Combined with the glacial and extraglacial stratigraphy, it shows that the area of Glacial Lake Norwood was possibly later filled with sediments, between masses of stagnant ice, following a damming of drainge in the south by the St. Louis Sublobe. The area was drained through the Embarrass channel when the St. Louis Sublobe retreated. Then followed the drainage of Lake Koochiching through the Embarrass channel. At ca. 10,200 14C yr B.P. the area apparently became free of stagnant ice as normal lake sedimentation began in all lakes studied. A lake-level rise is indicated ca. 1000 yr later. Apart from a long-lasting phase of birch tundra parkland between ca. 12,000 (or 11,500?) and 10,600 14C yr B.P., the general pollen stratigraphy fits into the regional picture with a more or less undisturbed and gradual plant immigration from the time of the culmination of the St. Louis Sublobe.

Type
Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 18 - 36
Copyright
University of Washington

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Footnotes

☆

Contribution 368, Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota.

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