Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Provenance Signatures Of The Antarctic Ice Sheets In The Ross Embayment During The Late Miocene To Early Pliocene: The Andrill And-1b Core Record, Franco M. Talarico, Sonia Sandroni

ANDRILL Research and Publications

Significant down-core modal and compositional variations are described for granule- to cobble-sized clasts in the Early Pliocene to Middle/Late Miocene sedimentary cycles of the AND-1B drill core at the NW edge of the Ross Ice Shelf (McMurdo Sound).

Long-term shifts in compositional patterns outline an evolving provenance which is interpreted as reflecting the combined effects and complex interactions among variations in ice volume, ice flow patterns and paleogeographic changes linked to the local tectonic and volcanic activity. High-frequency variations and the petrological features of the basement clast fraction provide direct information about the potential source regions during both glacial maxima …

Modeling West Antarctic Ice Sheet Growth And Collapse Through The Past Five Million Years, David Pollard, Robert M. Deconto

ANDRILL Research and Publications

The West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), with ice volume equivalent to ~5 m of sea level, has long been considered capable of past and future catastrophic collapse. Today, the ice sheet is fringed by vulnerable floating ice shelves that buttress the fast flow of inland ice streams. Grounding lines are several hundred meters below sea level and the bed deepens upstream, raising the prospect of runaway retreat. Projections of future WAIS behavior have been hampered by limited understanding of past variations and their underlying forcing mechanisms. Its variation since the Last Glacial Maximum is best known, with grounding lines advancing …

New Seismic Methods To Support Sea-Ice Platform Drilling, M. A. Speece, Richard Levy, D. M. Harwood, Stephen F. Pekar, R. D. Powell

ANDRILL Research and Publications

The ANtarctic geological DRILLing Program (ANDRILL) is currently a consortium of five nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America). By drilling, coring and analyzing stratigraphic archives along the Antarctic continental margin, ANDRILL pursues its primary goal of better understanding the role the Antarctic cryosphere plays in the global climate system (Harwood et al., 2006). The ANDRILL drilling system was developed to operate on both ice shelf and sea-ice platforms (Harwood et al., 2006; Falconer et al., 2007; Naish et al., 2007; Florindo et al., 2008). While thick multiyear sea ice provides stable and …

Provenance Of Pleistocene Sediments In The Andrill And-1b Drillcore: Clay And Heavy Mineral Data, Giovanna Giorgetti, Franco M. Talarico, Sonia Sandroni, Antonio Zeoli

ANDRILL Research and Publications

The cryosphere in the McMurdo Sound region has undergone significant modifications during the last 1 Ma. Consequently, the sedimentary sequences underlying the modern McMurdo Ice-Shelf provide geological data to reconstruct variations in transport and depositional mechanisms of terrigenous material due to variations in ice sheet extension, grounding line position and main icestream flow directions during glacial and interglacial periods. The present study aims to investigate the clay and heavy mineral assemblages of the late Pleistocene subglacial and glaciomarine sediments recovered during the ANDRILL-McMurdo Ice Shelf Project in Windless Bight (South of Ross Island). The analyses show that the sediments are …