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Late-Quaternary cryostratigraphy of a coastal cliff at Martha Point, southwest Banks Island, western Canadian ArcticCentre for Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Reading, Box 227, Reading RG6 6AB, UK A 5 m thick unlithified sequence consisting of sands, silts and minor peats crop out in a coastal cliff within continuous permafrost. A well-exposed 70 m long section displayed a range of epigenetic ice wedges. These could be classified into three generations, each at a different stratigraphic level. The oldest was truncated by a major thaw unconformity which was overlain by a bed of highly involuted silts with peat clasts, interpreted as evidence of a deep palaeoactive layer and associated thermokarst. This bed forms part of a regionally extensive thermokarst phase, correlated with an early-Holocene Climatic Optimum. The other two ice-wedge horizons postdate the thermokarst event with the youngest approximating to the base of the modern active layer.
Key Words: Permafrost epigenetic ice wedges involutions thaw unconformity palaeoactive layer Holocene Climatic Optimum Canadian Arctic
The Holocene, Vol. 10, No. 3,
395-400 (2000) This article has been cited by other articles:
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