Origin of the Herman–Norcross–Tintah sequence of Lake Agassiz beaches in Manitoba, Canada

Abstract

The giant glacial Lake Agassiz basin is fringed by many strandlines, which have long been used to trace the paleogeography of the former lake over its 5000year history. The oldest and highest of these strandlines were placed into three groups by Warren Upham in the 1890s – the Herman, Norcross, and Tintah – and form a staircase of small landforms. The formation of these old strandlines began as early as ~13.9 cal (12.0 14C) kyr BP and ended ~12.8 cal (10.8 14C) kyr BP, based on OSL dates and the history of lake level in the Agassiz basin. New mapping and augering of beach ridges in southern Manitoba, Canada, associated with the earliest phase of the lake, indicate that there are a series of up to 28 small discontinuous beach ridges that are generally only a few metres high and a few tens of metres wide. These beaches mainly consist of weakly defined beds of poorly sorted sediments; in many cases a central sandy diamicton unit lies stratigraphically between overlying beach sediments and clay diamicton (till) below. Spatially, ridges are separated by silty or sandy units or gravel lags; inter-beach lagoonal organics were not found. We discuss the possible origin of these Lake Agassiz beaches, concluding that they were deposited over a few centuries by episodic storm events, as lake level slowly declined. We base this conclusion on the nature of the sediments in the beach ridges and the regional geomorphology, as well theoretical considerations about sedimentation along a regressing shoreline of a large lake. Other origins are rejected, although some other factors may have contributed to formation of some of the beaches, such as temporary increases in sediment supply, variable rate of outlet erosion, and short increases in lake-level that reworked sediment upslope into ridges. Using the time frame of 13.9 to 12.8 cal kyr BP for the formation of the beaches, the average interval between formation of each beach is ~39 years.