The late pleistocene glaciation in the northern Chukchi Peninsula

Abstract

Abstract A study of landform features in the Vankarem Lowland, northern Chukhui Peninsula, has revealed a pattern of repetitive alpine and piedmont glacial advances during the late Quaternary. A succession of terminal moraines, produced by alpine and piedmont glaciers, indicates that thin piedmont glaciers extended as much as 80 km from the mountain summits. Glacial deposits and landforms in the western Vankarem Lowland are overlain by Sartanian and Karginian (Middle Wisconsinan/Weichselian) organic-bearing sediments. Organic sediments interstratified with the glacial deposits are associated with the Zyryanian (Early Wisconsinan/Weichselian), and thus indicate that the earlier glaciation was more extensive than the subsequent Sartanian event. Alpine and adjacent piedmont areas were glaciated during the Sartanian (Late Wisconsinan/Weichselian), despite the postulated dry Sartanian climate and the distance separating the Vankarem Lowland from the receded Chukhui Sea littoral. Glacial events in the Chukhui Peninsula can be correlated to those throughout Yakutia, the Brooks Range of Alaska, and the Mackenzie Valley, with the Sartanian event and its equivalents reaching their maxima, ca. 30,000 BP.