Large, buried glacial moraines revealed by TOPAS sub-bottom profiling, South Orkney Islands, South Atlantic Ocean

Dickens, William A.; Graham, A. G. C.; Smith, James A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1333-2544; Dowdeswell, J. A.. 2016 Large, buried glacial moraines revealed by TOPAS sub-bottom profiling, South Orkney Islands, South Atlantic Ocean. In: Dowdeswell, J.A.; Canals, M.; Jakobsson, M.; Todd, B.J.; Dowdeswell, E.K.; Hogan, K.A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1256-8010, (eds.) Atlas of submarine glacial landforms: modern, Quaternary and ancient. London, Geological Society of London, 251-252. (Geological Society Memoir, 46, 46).

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Abstract/Summary

Subglacial and ice-marginal landforms produced during the Last Glacial Maximum and subsequent regional deglaciation become progressively more buried, especially when postglacial sedimentation rates are high. Sub-bottom profiling is usually used to examine the stratigraphy of submarine glacial deposits, but is only rarely exploited to visualize the topography beneath postglacial infill. By picking and gridding the basal reflector from a relatively dense network (spacing of <1.5 km) of TOPAS parametric sub-bottom profiles, we visualize both the modern seafloor of Orwell Trough, South Orkney (SO) Islands, and reconstruct the glacial landforms buried beneath up to c. 54 m of subsequent fine-grained sedimentation (Fig. 1). Based on accompanying sedimentological evidence and the shallow acoustic stratigraphy, the basal reflector is interpreted as the upper surface of either a subglacial till or coarse-grained ice-proximal debris (Fig. 1d).

Item Type:	Publication - Book Section
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1144/M46.47
Programmes:	BAS Programmes > BAS Programmes 2015 > Palaeo-Environments, Ice Sheets and Climate Change
ISBN:	9781786202680
ISSN:	0435-4052
Date made live:	09 Jan 2017 10:49 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/515708

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