Bedforms of the Keewatin Ice Sheet, Canada

Abstract

By compiling glacial bedforms on a map that covers most of one sector of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, it is possible to make some suggestions about their genesis based largely on spatial relationships. It can be concluded that drumlins and ribbed moraine form at the base of actively flowing ice under similar dynamic conditions. For either landform to exist, however, there must have been enough sediment available in the base of the glacier to leave or form a feature large enough to be recognizable. The presence or absence of sufficient load is related to the geology of the glacier bed and has little to do with regionally changing dynamics of the ice-water system. Likewise, given sufficient load, it is evident that whether drumlins formed or whether ribbed moraine formed in a certain area is a function of the physical nature of the load which is, again, related to geology of the source outcrops. Whether the physical characteristics come into play after the sediment has been released from the ice and is being reshaped by basal drag, streamlining, etc., or whether the nature of the load while entrained changes the behaviour of the basal part of the ice is unclear. Physical characteristics of the basal sediment load have apparently promoted internal thrusting of coherent slabs of entrained debris and ice to form ribbed moraine on melting, whereas drumlins may reflect moulding of plastic subglacial debris or erosional streamlining of both the unconsolidated glacial substrate and bedrock. The observation that many eskers cross drumlin fields at nearly right angles to their orientation suggests that conditions producing streamlining and those pertaining to subglacial drainage are separated in time and circumstance. The general occurrence of drumlins and eskers throughout the sediment-rich portions of the Keewatin Ice Sheet, from Zone 1 to its edge, is difficult to reconcile with the restriction and intimate association of these forms with ribbed moraine almost exclusively in Zone 2. Because such a zonal relationship exists to some extent around other ice divides, at least in Labrador/Nouveau Quebec and Newfoundland, it seems that some condition changed or existed in this zone throughout or at some specific time during the existence of the Keewatin Ice Sheet. Possibly around the last ice divides, reactivation of the ice sheet by alimentation associated with climatic deterioration may have promoted flow of thin, brittle ice. This may have “shattered” the glacier, forming stacked thrust plates of ice and debris. With subsequent stagnation, the thrust plates may have melted out without substantial deformation.