Icesheet Sea-Level, Climatic Interactions, During the Younger Dryas/Cockburn Interval (11-8 KA): Evidence on a Lake Coring Program, Outermost SE Baffin Island N.W.T.

John T. Andrews    andrewsj@spot.colorado.edu (Principal Investigator current)
Gifford H. Miller (Co-Principal Investigator current)
Kerstin M. Williams (Co-Principal Investigator current)
            
Abstract    

     This award will support an interaction between:  1) glacial response, 2)
     sea-level variations, and 3) climate, around the margin of the Laurentide Ice
     Sheet in the vicinity of Hudson Strait and Frobisher Bay, Eastern Canadian
     Arctic. The focus for the investigation includes two major moraine forming
     intervals, the Hall and Frobisher Bay moraines, that are C-14 dated at greater
     than 10.3 and ca. 8.4 thousands years respectively.  The former may be coeval
     with the Younger Dryas stadial of NW Europe; the latter is a major event
     (Cockburn Substage) around the residual Laurentide Ice Sheet.  Studies on mass
     physical properties, texture, pollen, and diatoms will be undertaken on a
     series of lake cores.  One of the critical problems in arctic lake studies is
     C-14 dating of sediments with very low organic contents.  This problem will be
     investigated by: 1) comparisons between AMS dates on macrofossils and bulk
     sediment dates; and 2) studies to document the C-14 inventory of two small lake
     basins which include sampling soils, raised marine sediments, water, and lake
     sediments.