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Oriented-lake development in the context of late Quaternary landscape evolution, McKinley Bay Coastal Plain, western Arctic Canada

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posted on 2023-06-07, 07:16 authored by Stephen Wolfe, Julian MurtonJulian Murton, Mark Bateman, John BarlowJohn Barlow
Oriented lakes—characterized by elongate forms, central basins and shallow littoral shelves—are common features of circum-arctic coastal lowlands. The environmental conditions, geological processes and chronology associated with the development of oriented lakes, however, are little known but essential for understanding how such Arctic lowlands evolve. Using combined techniques of field and drill-log stratigraphy and sedimentology, luminescence and radiocarbon dating methods and geomorphic mapping, we reconstruct the landscape evolution leading toward oriented-lake formation on the McKinley Bay Coastal Plain of western Arctic, Canada—a region with over 900 oriented lakes. Most lakes with deep central basins are inherited from a preglacial braidplain (ca. 73–27 ka) and alluvial braided-channel network that extended beyond the glacial limit (ca. 18.6–14.3 ka). Eolian erosion, active during the lateglacial and postglacial period (ca. 12.8–1.9 ka), reworked fluvial deposits. Eolian processes modified existing basins and created other shallow deflationary basins, as small barchanoid dunes migrated under cold, dry paraglacial conditions between about 12.8 and 10.7 ka. Vegetation cover developed at the onset of the early Holocene climatic optimum ca. 10.7 ka, and parabolic dunes were active between 9.6 and 4.6 ka. Thus, oriented lakes developed in basins conditioned by fluvial and eolian processes. In the absence of much near-surface ground ice, lateral expansion of deep-basin lakes and shallow stabilized deflationary basins predominated during the late Holocene through wind-induced wave and current processes. Overall, this sequence of oriented-lake formation does not support a thaw-lake cycle but, rather, small-basin evolution of a periglacial landscape.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Quaternary Science Reviews

ISSN

0277-3791

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

242

Article number

a106414

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2020-06-16

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2021-07-12

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2020-06-16

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