ABSTRACT: Buried glacier ice in permafrost, a window to the past: examples from Bylot Island, Canadian Arctic.

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Abstract

Bylot Island is located north of Baffin Island (73°N, 80°W) and is extensively covered by an ice cap and its outlet glaciers flowing towards the arctic lowland of the Lancaster formation. During summers of 2009 and 2011 several active-layer detachment slides exposed large massive ice bodies and other types of debris-rich ice that were interpreted as buried glacier ice. The upper part of the massive ice and debris-rich ice were usually in contact with various types of ice-contact or glacio-fluvial sediments and in some cases they were covered by mass wasting/colluvial deposits. This suggests that their preservation was likely related to burial of the ice and refreezing of the overlying sediments following permafrost aggradation. A preliminary analysis of the ice facies and ice crystals revealed the presence of four distinct types of ice: 1) clear-ice bodies with very few sediment and no organic inclusions. The ice crystals were large (cm), randomly oriented and air bubbles were observed at the junction of crystals. These characteristics could potentially indicate an englacial (snow-neve metamorphism) origin for these clear ice bodies; 2) large, meter thick, clear ice layers with no sediment, nor organics. The ice crystals were large (cm), several cm long, oriented in the same direction, and vertically aligned. These characteristics could potentially point to water that refroze in a tunnel incised in englacial ice; 3) Successive, mm to cm thick, ice layers, separated by undulating sand and gravel bands also containing cobles to boulder size rock fragments. These characteristics could potentially represent regelation ice formed at the base of glaciers and incorporated to the glacier sole; 4) mm to cm suspended aggregate of fine-grained sediments in clear ice. These micro-suspended and suspended cryostructures were sometimes deformed and aligned in the form of thin (mm) undulating layers. These micro-structures were very similar to basal ice facies, presumably related to glacio-hydrologic supercooling, that we observed at the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. Interestingly, the various types of ice contained in buried glacier ice permafrost date back to the englacial ice formation and its subsequent deformation by glacier flow and glacio-hydrological dynamics. It is thus older by several centuries to millennia than the permafrost aggradation itself (burial and active layer development) and we used the term antegenetic, in opposition to epigenetic or syngenetic, to characterize this type of permafrost. Buried glacier ice is a window to the past and a unique tool to reconstruct the paleogeography and paleoclimatology of Arctic regions. In a warming climate, as glaciers are receding, the burial of ice in the proglacial environment will offer opportunities to characterize antegenetic permafrost aggradation and its related cryofacies. In warming permafrost environments, as active layers on slope deepen and detachment slides are triggered, more buried Pleistocene glacier ice will likely be exposed.

Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology