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More on Deep Glacial Erosion by Continental Ice Sheets and Their Tongues of Distributary Ice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William A. White
William A. White*
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 USA
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Abstract

High latitude intracontinental seaways occupy great troughs carved by broad tongues of inland ice as it debouched to deep marine water. Such troughs occur in glaciated coasts, but not in stable, nonglaciated ones. Where ice flowed along the walls of troughs whose adjacent uplands held local glaciers, the walls simulate alpine troughs with faceted spurs and submarine hanging tributary valleys. Where uplands were not glaciated, trough walls are unbreached. Where ice flowed across them, coasts are digitate in low relief. In the northeastern sector of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, large glacial grooves converge toward the Gulf of Boothia-Prince Regent Inlet-Lancaster Sound avenue of egress to open sea, suggesting that it was an exit for inland ice which shaped it to its present form. The subduction Pacific coast of the Americas is mostly harborless in nonglaciated latitudes, but in southern Chile and British Columbia it is dissected. A circular gravity high 2800 km across is concentric with the area covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Abyssal glacial silts are voluminous enough to account for an average of 100–150 m of erosion over the area covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , September 1988 , pp. 137 - 150
Copyright
University of Washington

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