Late history of glacial Lake Agassiz in northwestern Ontario, Canada: a case study in the Sandy Lake basin

Abstract

The Sandy Lake basin in northwestern Ontario is a potentially important area for insights into the late history of glacial Lake Agassiz because of its extensive glaciolacustrine deposits and well-preserved shoreline features of this geological episode. However, little information is available on its deglaciation history. Recent mapping shows the withdrawal of the ice from the basin center and subsequent deposition of extensive varved clay in the lake with an optically stimulated luminescence-dated maximum age at 11.4 ± 0.9 ka. With its further recession, the ice constructed the Opasquia moraine on the northern rim of the basin sometime before the development on the moraine of the first major shoreline of the lake (the The Pas, inferred at 10.1 ka). Lowering of the lake level formed many strandlines on the moraine and elsewhere in the basin, which can be correlated with those in the main Agassiz basin based on projected water planes (the The Pas to Ponton). Radiocarbon dating on basal wood remains of surface peat in a former strait defined by the Ponton shoreline and a nearby site on the former lake floor indicates the abandonment of this shoreline and hence the withdrawal of Lake Agassiz from the Sandy Lake basin by 8.3 ± 0.1 cal ka (UOC-7883). The date, although a minimum-limiting age, provides the hitherto best possible age constraint for the Ponton–Kinojévis shorelines, which many hypothesize represent one of the major lake levels during the final drainage of Lake Agassiz into Hudson Bay but have never been adequately dated before.