Quaternary glacial and marine environmental history of northwest Greenland: a review and reappraisal

New information on Middle and Late Quaternary deposits of the Thule region, northwest Greenland necessitates the revision of the chronostratigraphy of the area and allows fuller understanding of the marine environmental changes in Baffin Bay. The stratigraphic record is interpreted as the product of three marine events (Saunders O, Qarmat and Nuna, in decreasing age), during which marine sedimentation occurred on coastal areas now land, and three or four glacial events of decreasing age and ice cover (Agpat, Narsaarsuk, and Kap Abernathy/Wolstenholme Fjord), to which the marine events were glacio-isostatically related. Subarctic Atlantic water reached this northern part of Baffin Bay during all three marine events but the warmest conditions, warmer than the present, occurred in the Qarmat event, correlated with the deep sea Oxygen Isotope Stage 5e. The question of late Stage 5 events is considered. The Nuna event dates to latest Stage 2 and the Holocene, whilst the Saunders O event is of uncertain age but at least Stage 6. A number of glacial events with advances confined to the fjords are dated to Stage 2 (Wolstenholme Fjord), and late Stage 6 (Narsaarsuk) and an intermediate advance (Kap Abernathy) is undated in the range of Stage 2-5. Extension of glaciation to the shelf edge is dated to Stage 6 (Agpat event). (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.