Summary: | Describes an upward arch of soil and ice and its associated aufeis field, examined on the Arctic Slope in northeast Alaska on June 25, 1959. The icing mound consisted of a sinuous ridge about 250 ft. long which terminated in a low dome about 20 ft. high at the north end and in a lower pointed "tail" at the south end. Part of the "tail" had collapsed and revealed an underlying layer of ice about 4 ft thick characterized by a vertical columnar structure and overlain by 2 ft of organic silt and fine sand. The probable cause of uplift of the icing mound was cryostatic pressures accompanying growth of a ground-ice lens and hydrostatic pressures occurring, probably, when water backed up by the formation of aufeis became trapped between the ground-ice lens and permafrost.
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