COASTAL MORPHOLOGY OF A FAST UPLIFTING COAST: CHARACTERISTICS AND IMPLICATIONS. THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA, ISL. GREENWICH, SOUTH SHETLAND

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Fort Williams; Greenwich; Greenwich Island; Maldonado Station; Quito; Quito Glacier; The Antarctic; Williams Cape; Antarc*; antartic*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.535.2440; http://www.inocar.mil.ec/docs/ABS_ISAESs.pdf

One of the scientific prospects of the VIII Ecuadorian expedition and summer stay in the Pedro Vicente Maldonado Station of Fort Williams Cape (Greenwich Island) was dedicated to morphologic observation along the coast. The interest was both the quantification of the post-glacial uplift in this area, and the identification of the morphologic patterns able to characterise a fast uplifting coast. The eustasy since the last glacial period (Pirazzoli 1991), as well as the fact that the Antartic peninsula belongs to an active margin submitted to vertical tectonic motion, suggests that there is few probability of encountering relict coastal morphology from the previous interglacial period (Trenhaile 2002). The shallow coasts: In their Araya and Hervé (1966) studied the coastal morphology of Greenwich Island and pointed out the presence and wide extension of beach ridges. These ridges characterise relatively flat areas, where important supplies of detritus is available from the hinterland, because long-shore sedimentary transport is relatively limited. In Fort Williams Cape the detritus of beach ridge comes from two valleys issued from the lower slopes of the Quito Glacier, and located NW and NE of the cape. The stepped succession of beach ridges gives a picture of the successive shorelines, while the area was uplifted. The more recent ridges are parallel to the present shoreline, and their elevation fits with the maximum sea level during summer. The combination of sediment supply and coastal protection by ice