Evidence for high water levels in the Erie basin during the Younger Dryas chronozone

Abstract

A high water phase in the Lake Erie basin is identified from a variety of evidence for the period 11.0 ka to 10.5 ka. It is believed to correspond to the first Agassiz inflow to the upper Great Lakes (Main Lake Algonquin phase) when Agassiz waters discharged in both catastrophic and equilibrium modes to Lake Superior. After allowing for differential isostatic rebound, a computational model is used to estimate the lake levels in the Erie basin needed to generate Agassiz-equivalent discharges out of the basin into Lake Ontario. Computations suggest that Lake Tonawanda spillways would be re-activated by the high lake levels needed to sustain Agassiz-equivalent discharges. Existing published evidence from the Erie basin, Niagara River, and western New York (including 14C dates), is consistent with this interpretation. Additional evidence from the Niagara Peninsula (pollen spectra and geomorphology) supports the inference that extensive flooding of the southern Niagara Peninsula (Lake Wainfleet) occurred due to high water levels in the Erie basin. In the Niagara Peninsula, very shallow ‘washover’ spillways would only operate when standard hydrologic variations of lake level in the Erie basin coincided with short term high levels driven by catastrophic inflows to the Great Lakes from Lake Agassiz. We support the view of Lewis & Anderson (1992) that a meltwater flux from Agassiz inflows reached Lake Erie.