The Multiple-Working Hypothesis As Applied to Alaska's Oriented Lakes

• Main Authors: Carson, Charles E., Huddey, Keith M.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: UNI ScholarWorks 1959
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol66/iss1/46; https://scholarworks.uni.edu/context/pias/article/2656/viewcontent/46_The_Multiple_Working_Hypothesis_As_Applied_to_Alaska_s.pdf

The problem of the oriented lakes on Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain provides an excellent opportunity for illustrating the application of the method of multiple-working hypotheses to a geologic problem. Five hypotheses are considered and are deemed to be inconclusive; a composite of these is thought to provide an explanation of the lakes' origin. The hypotheses considered are: (1) that waves, produced by an ancient prevailing wind blowing parallel to the lake elongation, eroded the basins; (2) that the present winds produce wave current systems which preferentially scour the north and south lake shores, thus producing elongation; (3) that the winds produce a preferred distribution of sediment which determines orientation of the lakes by insulating the east and west shores, thus protecting them from erosion (4) that orientation is developed by thaw produced by maximum insolation during the noon-hours; and (5) that the lakes are developed along north-south trending ice-wedges which formed in the north-south components of a right-angle fracture system. The process of consideration and elimination of these hypotheses leads to a composite hypothesis. This proposes that oriented ice-wedges might develop in the fracture system; that maximum insolation would be more effective in melting the north-south trending wedges than the complementary set; that the oriented depressions so oriented would in effect be perpetuated and enlarged by thaw and wind (wave) oriented sediments on the east-west shores.