The deglaciation of Atlantic Canada as reconstructed from the postglacial relative sea-level record

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
• Main Authors: Quinlan, Garry, Beaumont, Christopher
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Science Publishing 1982
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/e82-197; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/e82-197

The post-Wisconsinan relative sea-level record from Atlantic Canada is used to reconstruct the morphology of late Wisconsinan age ice cover during its retreat from the Atlantic region. The proposed reconstruction has little or no grounded ice in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, an ice dome over the north shore of the St. Lawrence, and thin ice, often less than 1 km thick, over much of the rest of the area. A sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed reconstruction is not unique in its ability to account for the relative sea-level record but that the thickness of ice in any individual area of the reconstruction is unlikely to be in error by more than a factor of two. The exact position of the ice margin in some areas is not well constrained by the model; an example is in southeastern Newfoundland.The numerical model used to relate ice morphology to postglacial relative sea level assumes that the ice sheets are isostatically equilibrated at the glacial maximum and, therefore, that load changes associated with earlier ice-sheet growth may be ignored. This assumption is shown to be reasonable. The same rapid relaxation of the Earth that allows one to ignore the effects of glacial accumulation, however, prohibits one from recognizing the effects of large-scale ablation that may have occurred prior to the assumed glacial maximum. For this reason the proposed reconstruction may be representative of only a late stage in the ablation of much more extensive and thicker ice sheets.Surfaces of relative sea level are presented for Atlantic Canada at various times in the past. These surfaces coincide with observational data where such data exist and are felt to provide reasonable estimates of relative sea level at all other locations for at least the last 13 000 years.