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Cosmogenic 10Be dating of raised shorelines constrains the timing of lake levels in the eastern Lake Agassiz-Ojibway basin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2017

Pierre-Marc Godbout ,
Martin Roy ,
Jean J. Veillette  and
Joerg M. Schaefer
Pierre-Marc Godbout*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, GEOTOP Research Center, University of Quebec atMontreal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3P8, Canada
Martin Roy
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, GEOTOP Research Center, University of Quebec atMontreal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3P8, Canada
Jean J. Veillette
Affiliation:
Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, 615 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0E9, Canada
Joerg M. Schaefer
Affiliation:
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Geochemistry, 409 Comer Building, 61 Route 9W, P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, New York 10964, USA Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
*
*Corresponding author at: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, GEOTOP Research Center, University of Quebec at Montreal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3P8, Canada. E-mail address: godbout.pierre-marc@courrier.uqam.ca (P.-M. Godbout).
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Abstract

Surface exposure dating was applied to erosional shorelines associated with the Angliers lake level that marks an important stage of Lake Ojibway. The distribution of 15 10Be ages from five sites shows a main group (10 samples) of coherent 10Be ages yielding a mean age of 9.9±0.7 ka that assigns the development of this lake level to the early part of the Lake Ojibway history. A smaller group (3 samples) is part of a more scattered distribution of older 10Be ages (with 2 outliers) that points to an inheritance of cosmogenic isotopes from a previous exposure, revealing an apparent mean age of 15.8±0.9 ka that is incompatible with the Ojibway inundation and the regional deglaciation. Our results provide the first direct 10Be chronology on the sequence of lake levels in the Ojibway basin, which includes the lake stage presumably associated with the confluence and subsequent drainage of Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway. This study demonstrates the potential of this approach to date glacial lake shorelines and underlies the importance of obtaining additional chronological constraints on the Agassiz-Ojibway shoreline sequence to confidently assign a particular lake stage and/or lake-level drawdown to a specific time interval of the deglaciation.

Keywords

Glacial Lake OjibwayLake Agassiz-OjibwayMeltwater volumeLast deglaciationLaurentide Ice SheetGeochronologySurface exposure dating
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , September 2017 , pp. 265 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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