Marginal Glacial Drainage Features in the Finger Lake Region

Abstract

A study of a considerable number of the channels or scourways formed by streams associated with the Pleistocene ice sheet in the southern Finger Lake region of New York has served to bring out many features of more than local interest and importance, both as to the broader phases of glaciation in this part of New York State, and as to the value of a study of such channels as an aid in working out the glacial geology of a region. This study has a distinct bearing on the interglacial problem in that several of these channels give conclusive evidence of more than one stage of glaciation, while one points strongly to three or more such stages with corresponding interglacial epochs, some of which seem to have been considerably longer than post-glacial time. Other channels are so situated as to make possible a fairly accurate estimate of the slope of the ice margin along the valley tongues. Still another furnishes proof of an extensive sinking of the surface consequent upon the melting-out of a large block of buried ice-a phenomenon, the importance of which seems not to be fully appreciated. The Finger Lake region, lying as it does along the belt of the great recessional moraines of the Wisconsin ice sheet, is especially favorable for the study of marginal glacial drainage features. The long halts of the glacier, while the moraines were building, gave ample time for the associated streams to carve for themselves distinct channels