ABSTRACT: End moraines and deglaciation chronology in northern Canada with special reference to southern Baffin Island

CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Abstract

An extensive system of end moraines near Frobisher Bay and on Foxe Peninsula, in southern Baffin Island, are described for the first time. The section crossing Frobisher Bay can be traced for some 325 miles (525 km). The high level "strandlines" described from the southwest side of Frobisher Bay by several workers are in reality a combination of kame terraces, lateral moraines, and marginal lake terraces--all related to the moraine system and formed beside a major ice lobe entering Frobisher Bay from the northwest. Numerous radiocarbon dates show that: 1) ice from Hudson Strait impinged on the south coast of Baffin Island during the last glaciation, carrying marine shells far above the level of marine submergence; 2) all or nearly all of Hudson Strait was filled by ice 9,000 years ago, but was ice free by 8,000 years ago, and the sea had reached the limit of submergence south of James Bay a short time after 8,000 years BP; 3) the major moraines crossing Frobisher Bay, near Rae Isthmus at the south end of Melville Peninsula, and at MacAlpine Lake, District of Mackenzie, were forming some 8,200 years ago, but parts of the moraine system in northern Baffin Island probably formed earlier; 4) moraine formation continued for several hundred years after 8,200 BP; 5) innermost Frobisher Bay and Foxe Basin were ice free by 6,900 to 6,700 years ago; and 6) Amad~uak Lake was free of ice before 4,500 BP, although the last mass of ice, which lay northeast of this lake, may have still been in existence then. The orientation of the moraines in southern Baffin Island and radiocarbon dates from widely spaced areas in northern Canada show the need for reappraisal of the "Cockburn Glacial Phase" hypothesis and the postulated position of the ice-edge 9,500 or 9,000 to 8,000 years ago (cf. Falconer et al., 1965a, 1965b).

Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology