Stratigraphy and glaciotectonics structures of a relict deforming bed of permafrost at the northwestern margin of the Laurentide ice sheet, Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands, Canada

Description/Abstract

The upper 5-20 m of ice-rich permafrost at three sites overridden by the northwest margin of the Laurentide ice sheet in the Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands, western Arctic Canada, comprise massive ice beneath ice-rich diamicton or sandy silt. The diamicton and silt contain (1) truncated ice blocks up to 15 m long, (2) sand lenses and layers, (3) ice veins dipping at 20-30°, (4) ice lenses adjacent and parallel to sedimentary contacts, and (5) ice wedges. The massive ice is interpreted as intrasedimental or buried basal glacier ice, and the diamicton and silt as glacitectonite that has never thawed. Deformation of frozen ground was mainly ductile in character. Deformation was accompanied by sub-marginal erosion of permafrost, which formed an angular unconformity along the top of the massive ice and supplied ice clasts and sand bodies to the overlying glacitectonite. After deformation and erosion ceased, postglacial segregated ice and ice-wedge ice developed within the deformed permafrost.