Glacial Marine Sedimentation: Paleoclimatic Significance

Abstract

This publication resulted from a symposium held during the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America. Many, but not all, contributors to the symposium have papers in this volume. This Special Paper consists of 14 chapters and a Subject/Geographic index. Each chapter has is own list of references. The papers cover a wide range of modem climate/ ocean environments, including papers on glacial marine sediments from Antarctica, the fiords of Alaska, and sediments from the Canadian High Arctic. In addition, three papers discuss [open quote]old[close quotes] glacial marine records (i.e., pre-Tertiary), and one paper discusses the Yakataga Formation of the Gulf of Alaska which is a Miocene-to-late-Pleistocene sequence. The last chapter in the book includes a survey and summary of the evidence for the paleoclimatic significance of glacial marine sediments by the two editors, John Anderson and Gail Ashley. It is worth noting that Anderson and Domack state in the Foreword that there is a considerable variation in terminology; hence they employ a series of definitions which they urge the other authors to employ. They define and explain what they mean by [open quotes]polar ice cap,[close quotes] [open quote]polar tundra (subpolar),[close quotes] and [open quotes]temperate oceanic and boreal[closemore » quotes] in terms of the dominant glacial and glacial marine processes. Although one might quarrel with the terminology, the broad differences between these three glaciological regimes are indeed fundamental and need to be sought in the geological record. The flavor of the volume can be judged by some of the chapter titles. Contributions on Antarctica include a paper by Anderson and other entitled [open quote]Sedimentary facies associated with Antarctica's floating ice masses[close quotes] and a companion paper by Anderson and Domack which deals with the extremely complex glacial marine facies (13 facies are delimited) in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.« less