Expanded Late Wisconsinan ice cap and ice sheet margins in the western Queen Elizabeth Islands, Arctic Canada

Abstract

Recent mapping of surficial geology and geomorphology in the western Canadian High Arctic (Melville and Eglinton islands), together with new radiocarbon dates acquired from ice-contact raised marine sediments, document expanded late Wisconsinan ice limits for the northwest Laurentide Ice Sheet and the western Innuitian Ice Sheet. An extension of the northwestern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet onto Eglinton Island is proposed based on evidence from till containing erratics derived from the Canadian Shield and a pattern of meltwater channels indicating ice retreat offshore into M'Clure Strait. Expansion of the western Melville Island Ice Cap (part of the western, lowland sector of the Innuitian Ice Sheet) to its offshore late Wisconsinan limit was facilitated by coalescence with the Laurentide Ice Sheet, whose buttressing allowed thickening to occur. Estimates of ice extent and thickness (>500 m) of the western Melville Island Ice Cap are in agreement with high marine limits (≤70 m asl). Lateral and proglacial meltwater channels, moraines and glaciomarine, glaciolacustrine and glaciofluvial deposits indicate radial retreat of the western Melville Island Ice Cap onto central highlands after ∼13.0 cal ka BP. Older marine limit shorelines on southern Eglinton Island (∼13.6 cal ka BP) are broadly synchronous with the early and rapid deglaciation of other areas formerly glaciated by the northwestern Laurentide Ice Sheet to the southeast and southwest (∼14.2–13.6 cal ka BP). The collapse of the northwest Laurentide Ice Sheet in M'Clure Strait beginning at ∼14.2 cal ka BP, in addition to prior inferred thinning, opens the possibility that it made a significant contribution to meltwater pulse 1A.