Laura B. Levy

Glacier readvance during the late glacial (Younger Dryas?) in the Ahklun Mountains, southwestern Alaska

An expansion of alpine glaciers during the latest Pleistocene produced an extraordinarily well defined end moraine system in the Ahklun Mountains, southwestern Alaska. These moraines, deposited during the Mount Waskey advance, are several kilometers beyond modern glacier termini, and ∼80 km upvalley of the late Wisconsin Ahklun Mountains ice cap terminal moraine. Eleven cosmogenic 10 Be and 26 Al exposure ages on moraine boulders, combined with radiocarbon ages from a lake core upvalley of a moraine deposited during the Mount Waskey advance, suggest that the advance culminated between 12.4 and 11.0 ka, sometime during, or shortly following, the Younger Dryas event (ca. 12.9–11.6 ka). We believe that the Mount Waskey advance was a consequence of cooling during the Younger Dryas. These data further strengthen emerging evidence for Younger Dryas–age cooling of the North Pacific region.

Holocene glacier fluctuations, Waskey Lake, northeastern Ahklun Mountains, southwestern Alaska

Lake sediments from Waskey Lake, Ahklun Mountains, southwestern Alaska were studied to decipher the history of upvalley glacier fluctuations during the Holocene. Several indicators of glacier activity were measured including: magnetic susceptibility, organic-matter content, grain-size distribution, bulk-sediment mineralogy and diatom assemblages. Seven radiocarbon ages on macrofossils, along with cross-checks by tephrochronology, provide the chronology of the cores. The results from core WL-1 indicate that glaciers lingered near Waskey Lake until 9100 cal. yr BP, perhaps under conditions of high winter accumulation. Peak organic-matter content occurs at 7400 cal. yr BP, when precipitation might have shifted to summer. The onset of Neoglaciation occurred 3100 cal. yr BP, and glaciers reached their maximum extenñ700 cal. yr BP. This chronology is consistent with the lichenometrically dated moraines from the glacier forefields. Although the ages are tentative, the youngest and most widespread group of moraines was deposited sometime between 650 and 200 cal. yr BP (during the‘Little Ice Age’). Since then, glaciers in the Waskey Lake area have shrunk bñ50% and equilibrium-line altitudes (ELA) have risen by 35± 22 m. This rise in ELA is much less than the 100 to 200 m rise observed elsewhere in Alaska and indicates considerable spatial variability in late-Holocene climatic change.

Coeval fluctuations of the Greenland ice sheet and a local glacier, central East Greenland, during late glacial and early Holocene time

We present a 10Be chronology of late glacial to early Holocene fluctuations of a Greenland ice sheet outlet glacier and the adjacent Milne Land ice cap in central East Greenland. Ages of boulders on bedrock indicate that both ice masses receded during the Younger Dryas (YD), likely due to rising summer temperatures. Since Greenland ice core records register cold mean annual temperatures throughout the YD, these ice-marginal data support climate conditions characterized by strong seasonality. The ice sheet outlet glacier and ice cap deposited inner Milne Land Stade moraines at 11.4 ± 0.8 ka and 11.4 ± 0.6 ka, respectively (mean moraine ages and 1σ uncertainties). Based on the coeval moraine ages, we suggest that both ice masses responded to climate conditions acting on the ice margins, specifically ablation. Moreover, the ice sheet responded sensitively (i.e., on the same time scale as a small ice cap) to climate conditions.

One million years of glaciation and denudation history in west Greenland

The influence of major Quaternary climatic changes on growth and decay of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and associated erosional impact on the landscapes, is virtually unknown beyond the last deglaciation. Here we quantify exposure and denudation histories in west Greenland by applying a novel Markov-Chain Monte Carlo modelling approach to all available paired cosmogenic 10Be-26Al bedrock data from Greenland. We find that long-term denudation rates in west Greenland range from >50 m Myr−1 in low-lying areas to ∼2 m Myr−1 at high elevations, hereby quantifying systematic variations in denudation rate among different glacial landforms caused by variations in ice thickness across the landscape. We furthermore show that the present day ice-free areas only were ice covered ca. 45% of the past 1 million years, and even less at high-elevation sites, implying that the Greenland Ice Sheet for much of the time was of similar size or even smaller than today.