Late-Quaternary cryostratigraphy of a coastal cliff at Martha Point, southwest Banks Island, western Canadian Arctic

A 5 m thick unlithified sequence consisting of sands, silts and minor peats crop out in a coastal cliff within continuous permafrost. A well-exposed 70 m long section displayed a range of epigenetic ice wedges. These could be classified into three generations, each at a different stratigraphic level...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Holocene
Main Author: Worsley, Peter
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2000
Subjects:
Paleontology
Earth-Surface Processes
Ecology
Archeology
Global and Planetary Change
Arctic
Martha Point
Banks Island
Ice
permafrost
Thermokarst
wedge*
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/095968300675687786
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1191/095968300675687786
Description
Summary:A 5 m thick unlithified sequence consisting of sands, silts and minor peats crop out in a coastal cliff within continuous permafrost. A well-exposed 70 m long section displayed a range of epigenetic ice wedges. These could be classified into three generations, each at a different stratigraphic level. The oldest was truncated by a major thaw unconformity which was overlain by a bed of highly involuted silts with peat clasts, interpreted as evidence of a deep palaeoactive layer and associated thermokarst. This bed forms part of a regionally extensive thermokarst phase, correlated with an early-Holocene Climatic Optimum. The other two ice-wedge horizons postdate the thermokarst event with the youngest approximating to the base of the modern active layer.

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