| Summary: | A total of 10 persons, including members of faculty, graduate students and assistants were involved in the 1973 field season of the University of Colorado in both northern and southern Cumberland Peninsula. The major objectives of the research undertaken were: (a) to study the Quaternary geology and geomorphic processes operating within the Baffin Island National Park and on the Peninsula in general; and (b) to study the energy balance and break-up pattern of the Home Bay fast-ice sheet. . During the 1973 field season this research was expanded to include significant portions of the southern part of Cumberland Peninsula and of traverses through the main north-south passes of Pangnirtung Pass and the Padle/Kingnait fiords trough. . Field work was also carried out on the Tertiary basalts at Cape Dyer during which particular attention was paid to the weathering of the basalts and the vertical and horizontal extent of active ice during the Quaternary glaciations. The basalts were free from Precambrian erratic rocks from the west, and the maximum extent of glaciation appears to be marked by weathered lateral moraines below the lower DEW Line site. Marine shells were found associated with these tills and will be uranium series dated. Investigations in Pangnirtung Pass and the Kingnait/Padle trough to the east revealed thick deposits of "bedded sands". These deposits, which are probably colluviated loesses, are interbedded with thin organic partings and thicker units of peat. The deposits vary between 0.5 m. and 5 m. in thickness. Buried soils were found underlying late- and possibly mid-Wisconsin moraines in Pangnirtung Pass. These together with samples from the buried sands are in process of being radiocarbon dated. Studies in the diffluent valleys (cols at about 600 m. above sea level) leading from Pangnirtung Pass eastward towards the Padle/Kingnait trough suggested that early Wisconsin ice flowed eastward from the Pangnirtung Pass but that much of the area was ice-free by late Wisconsin time, and possibly well ...
|
|---|