A boulder beach formed by waves from a calving glacier; Eqip Sermia, West Greenland

• Published in: Boreas
• Main Author: NIELSEN, NIELS
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1992
• Subjects: Disko bugt; glacier; Greenland; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1502-3885.1992.tb00023.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1502-3885.1992.tb00023.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1502-3885.1992.tb00023.x

A large‐scale boulder beach close to a tidal glacier was examined at Eqip Sermia, Disko Bugt, West Greenland, in 1989. Photographs from 1912 and 1929 show an advance of the glacier of more than 1.5 km beyond its present location. Lateral and terminal moraines were formed in the sea, and subaerial parts and their positions can be detected from the old photographs. Today the outermost part of this moraine system has disappeared totally, except for about 1 km of the lateral moraine. The distal 300 m of the still existing moraine apparently has been displaced and transformed into a shape that, in plan view and cross‐section, resembles a barrier spit. The material of the boulder beach consists mainly of coarse clasts with boulders of 1 m to more than 1.5 m in diameter. Distributions of clast sizes and sediment structures on the barrier surface also suggest wave and overwash dynamics as being the responsible agents. Located in the inner part of a fiord system, the fetches are restricted and thus normal waves are very small. Large waves generated by glacier calving, and/or sea‐ice action, are therefore the only processes that can explain the geomorphology and clast distribution of this coastal feature.