Notes on Late-Glacial retreat of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and Holocene environmental changes along the Victoria Land coast

• Main Author: Carlo Baroni
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra - Universita degli Studi di Pisa, and C.N.R. -Centro di Studio per la Geologia Strutturale e Dinamica dell'Appennino 1994
• Subjects: glacial history; environmental change; raised beaches; Victoria Land; Antarctica; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Ross Sea; Terra Nova Bay; Antarc*; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelves; Memoirs of National Institute of Polar Research; Polar Research
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=2262; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00002262/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=2262&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

Distinct recessional phases with minor readvances of the outlet glaciers in Victoria Land are documented during Late Glacial times when the Antarctic Ice Sheet and its fringing ice shelves receded from the continental shelf in the Ross Sea embayment. Abandoned penguin rookeries supply data both on the history of the glacial retreat that followed the LGM and environmental changes during the Holocene. These were found along the Victoria Land coast and supplied more than seventy ^<14>C dates as old as 13070±405 ^<14>C yr B. P. (GX-18483). Marine ingression and the glacio-isostatic uplift of the coastal areas that led to the formation of Holocene raised beaches accompanied deglaciation. Several ^<14>C dates obtained from shells collected in raised marine sediments and from fossil rookeries resting on the raised beaches constrain a relative sea-level curve for the central part of Victoria Land. Penguins are sensitive to changes in Antarctic climate and to the environmental parameters that determine their presence and distribution that seem to have changed many times during the Holocene in the Ross Sea. Holocene glacier variations in the Terra Nova Bay area are documented for outlet and local glaciers as well as for ice shelves.