Laurentide Ice Sheet configuration in southern Ontario, Canada during the last glaciation (MIS 4 to 2) from stratigraphic drilling and LIDAR-based surficial mapping

Abstract

Regional subsurface mapping of glacial depositional systems preserved in buried bedrock paleovalleys, and quantitative analysis of new LiDAR imagery of surface glacial landforms using machine learning techniques, when combined, are powerful tools for assessing the dynamics of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) during the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation in southern Ontario. While age dating of deposits preserved below Last Glacial Maximum tills (LGM: MIS 2 < c.24,000 years before present; ybp) is still sparse, newly available sedimentological data derived by cored drilling, combined with legacy outcrop data, identifies thick (100 m +) successions of glaciolacustrine sediments and a lack of till(s) indicating that the ice sheet margin did not extend beyond the Niagara Escarpment at the western end of Lake Ontario, during the earliest phases of the glaciation (MIS 4) or the ensuing mid-Wisconsinan (MIS 3). Ice was able to extend into New York State blocking the Rome outlet to the Hudson Valley ponding deep proglacial lakes in the glacio-isostatically depressed Huron-Ontario-Erie basins recorded by thick glaciolacustrine sediments in paleovalleys. These were cannibalized by an expanding Late Wisconsinan ice sheet after ~ 24,000 ybp recorded by extensive till sheets resting on a marked erosional unconformity, with drumlinized surfaces. Analysis and visualization of LiDAR data identifies discrete statistically validated flow sets of highly elongated streamlined bedforms (mega-scale glacial lineations; MSGLs). These provide key evidence of a major reorganization of the ice sheet margin during deglaciation into lobate paleo ice streams shortly after 17,400 ybp.