The periglacial realm in North America during the Wisconsin glaciation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/BP/1962/11/3Keywords:
frost weathering, periglacial morphogenesis, cryoturbations, solifluctionAbstract
The existence of frost-debris and tundra zones adjacent to the icesheet in North America during the Wisconsin advance has been doubted because of the negative results of most pollen records. This is surprising since, theoretically, climatic conditions must have been as conductive to permafrost formation as in more oceanic Europe, where the wide distribution of periglacial phenomena is well known.
On the basis of geomorphologic and pedologic analysis, however, the evidence for periglacial morphogenesis is convincing. On the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and in the Appalachians cryoturbation and solifluction is much more widespread than formerly believed (frost-debris mantle, soil involutions, ice wedge casts, polygonal structures in hardpans, boulder streams, loess and inland dunes, thaw lakes). In the Midwest and the Great Plains frost-disturbed soils occur all along and even within the Wisconsin terminal moraines and are particularly frequent in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Unique and well-retained forms of patterned ground (silt mounds and tongues surrounded by stone circles and stripes, respectively) were found in the Pacifie Northwest. They occupy several hundred square miles, mostly on Columbia Plateau basalt and defy any explanation other than intensive former permafrost action.
The distribution of periglacial and related features (loess, snow line, biota) was used to reconstruct the morphoclimatic zonation of southern North America in the last cold phase of the Pleistocene.
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