The last interglacial-glacial transition in North America

✍ Scribed by R. G. WEST

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 119 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0267-8179
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1417(199603/04)11:2<167::aid-jqs224>3.0.co;2-f

✦ Synopsis

This volume derives from a symposium on the subject (taken to be 122-64 ka) held by the Geological Society of America in 1988. A few years delay in publication is not unusual in such cases; note that most of the papers here were accepted in 1991. The delay has not affected the interest and usefulness of the contributions, which cover the highly important matter of the change from the last interglacial to last glacial in the region dominated by the Laurentide ice-sheet and the Cordilleran ice-sheet. Considering the predominance of the Laurentide ice-sheet in contributing to global effects, such as, inter alia, sea-level fluctuations and the marine isotope ice volume signal, any student of these matters will have to take into account the facts described herein.

The contributions include an outline review of the period in North America, a historical review of Early Wisconsin glaciation (by R. P. Goldthwait, the doyen of North American glacial geology, to whom the volume is dedicated), matters of wide significance such as the marine isotope record, Useries dating of coastal sediments and ice-sheet initiation in relation to Milankovitch and global climate models, and finally reviews of the transition (glacial geology, stratigraphy, palaeontology, pedology) in significant areas, including the Canadian Arctic, areas across the glaciated region of Canada and the USA, the Cordillera and as far south as New Mexico. The reviews of the much-studied and classic sequences in Illinois and the Toronto area, for example, will be welcomed.