Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:03:15.982Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

More on Deep Glacial Erosion by Continental Ice Sheets and Their Tongues of Distributary Ice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William A. White
William A. White*
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

High latitude intracontinental seaways occupy great troughs carved by broad tongues of inland ice as it debouched to deep marine water. Such troughs occur in glaciated coasts, but not in stable, nonglaciated ones. Where ice flowed along the walls of troughs whose adjacent uplands held local glaciers, the walls simulate alpine troughs with faceted spurs and submarine hanging tributary valleys. Where uplands were not glaciated, trough walls are unbreached. Where ice flowed across them, coasts are digitate in low relief. In the northeastern sector of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, large glacial grooves converge toward the Gulf of Boothia-Prince Regent Inlet-Lancaster Sound avenue of egress to open sea, suggesting that it was an exit for inland ice which shaped it to its present form. The subduction Pacific coast of the Americas is mostly harborless in nonglaciated latitudes, but in southern Chile and British Columbia it is dissected. A circular gravity high 2800 km across is concentric with the area covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Abyssal glacial silts are voluminous enough to account for an average of 100–150 m of erosion over the area covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , September 1988 , pp. 137 - 150
Copyright
University of Washington

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambrose, J.W., (1964). Exhumed paleoplains of the Precambrian Shield of North America. American Journal of Science. 262, 817-857.Google Scholar
Bell, M., (1980). The Average Depth of Glacial Erosion in North America. Unpublished thesis. Department of Geology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.Google Scholar
Bell, M., Laine, E.P., (1980). More evidence from the deep sea on the depth of glacial erosion in North America. EOS. 61 17 276.Google Scholar
Bell, M., Laine, E.P., (1985). Erosion of the Laurentide Region of North America by glacial and glacio-fluvial processes. Quaternary Research. 23, 154-174.Google Scholar
Bird, J.B., (1967). The Physiography of Arctic Canada. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Boellstorff, J.D.Ms., (1973). Tephrochronology, Petrology and Stratigraphy of Some Pleistocene Deposits in the Central Plains, U.S.A.. Ph.D. thesis. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.Google Scholar
Bornhold, B.D., Finlayson, N.M., Monahan, D., (1976). Submerged drainage patterns in Barrow Strait, Canadian Arctic. Canadian Journal of Earth Science. 13, 305-311.Google Scholar
Easterbrook, D.J., Boellstorff, J., (1980). Paleomagnetic chronology of “Nebraskan-Kansan” tills in midwestern U.S.. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. 12, 419.Google Scholar
England, J., (1987). Glaciation and the evolution of the Canadian high arctic landscape. Geology. 15, 419-424.Google Scholar
Fenneman, N.M., (1938). Physiography of Eastern United States. McGraw-Hill, New York.Google Scholar
Gravenor, C.P., (1975). Erosion by continental ice sheets. American Journal of Science. 275, 594-604.Google Scholar
Holmes, C., (1937). Glacial erosion in a dissected plateau. American Journal of Science 5th Series. 33, 217-232.Google Scholar
Hughes, T.J., Denton, G.H., Bjön, G.A., Schilling, D.H., Fastook, J.L., Lingle, C.S., The last great ice sheets: A global view. Denton, G.H., Hughes, T.J., (1981). The Last Great Ice Sheets. Wiley, New York, 263-317.Google Scholar
Kerr, J.W., (1980). Structural framework of the Lancaster Aulacogen, arctic Canada. Canada Geologic Survey Bulletin. 319.Google Scholar
Klasner, J.S., Schulz, K.J., (1982). Concentrically zoned pattern in the bouguer gravity anomaly map of northeastern North America. Geology. 10, 537-541.Google Scholar
Klasner, J.S., Schulz, K.J., (1983). Comment and reply on “Concentrically zoned pattern in the Bouguer gravity anomaly map of northeastern North America”. Geology. 11, 318.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laine, E.P., (1980). New evidence from beneath the western North Atlantic for the depth of glacial erosion in Greenland and North America. Quaternary Research. 14, 188-198.Google Scholar
Mathews, W.H., (1975). Cenozoic erosion and erosion surfaces of eastern North America. American Journal of Science. 275, 818-824.Google Scholar
Mörner, N.A., (1978). Faulting, fracturing and seismicity as functions of glacio-isostacy in Fennoscandia. Geology. 6, 41-45.Google Scholar
Sugden, D.E., (1976). A case against deep erosion of shields by ice sheets. Geology. 4, 580-582.Google Scholar
White, W.A., (1972). Deep erosion by continental ice sheets. Geological Society of American Bulletin. 83, 1037-1056.Google Scholar