Coarse‐grained sediment gravity flow facies in a large supraglacial lake

Abstract

ABSTRACTNear Williams Lake, in the central interior of British Columbia, the Fraser River exposes long sections of late Pleistocene glaciolacustrine sediments selectively preserved within a bedrock trough. The dominant facies types are thick, normally graded gravels and sands that occupy steeply dipping multistorey channels up to 300 m wide and several tens of metres deep. Channels appear to have been simultaneously cut and filled by high density turbidity currents in a glacial lake floored by stagnant ice. Fining upward sediment gravity flow sequences up to 50 m thick may be the product of quasi‐continuous ‘surging’ turbidity flows triggered by catastrophic meltwater discharges into the trough or retrogressive failure of ice‐cored sediments. Large‐scale post‐depositional deformation structures, such as synclinal folds, normal faults, sedimentary dyke swarms and dewatering structures, record gravitational foundering of sediment and pore‐water expulsion caused by the melt of underlying glacier ice. Melting of buried ice masses along the floor of the trough appears to have controlled the flow paths of turbidity currents by producing sub‐basins within the overlying sediment pile. An idealized model of ‘supraglacial’ lacustrine sedimentation is developed that may be applicable to other glaciated areas with similar bedrock topography.