19 Ice sheets, glaciers, and landscapes, oh my!

Glaciers and ice sheets shaped the landscape of the Northeast. Ice continues to shape the landscape of alpine and polar regions. We welcome submissions on glaciers &  ice sheets of any size, shape, age, and location.

Monday, 23 March 2026
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
CCC, Room 26

Capturing Variable Ice Sheet Erosion and Landscape Evolution on Baffin Island, Arctic Canada

Paper number: 19-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 11:00 AM – 11:20 AM

Authors

Abstract

Despite the ubiquity of fiorded coastlines in the Arctic, the interactions between continental ice sheets and the underlying landscape that gave rise to the modern fiords and adjacent interfiord uplands that separate them is still poorly constrained. Previous work demonstrating the antiquity of these high-elevation upland surfaces on eastern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic indicate that these landscapes persisted relatively uneroded through at least the most recent glacial period and have the potential to provide information on the spatial and temporal patterns of ice cover and erosion on Baffin Island. Here, add 51 new samples for a total of 105 cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al measurements from preserved rock surfaces from both central Baffin Island and Cumberland Peninsula in southeast Baffin Island. 10Be and 26Al concentrations indicate minimum exposure times from several hundred thousand years up to >1 Myr and the 26Al and 10Be ratios require >1 Myr of ice burial in some cases. We apply an inverse Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to determine the combination of ice cover histories and glacial erosion rates most likely responsible for the measured 10Be and 26Al concentrations. We find that, in general, glacial erosion rates are inversely proportional to landscape elevation, and that upland regions likely experienced average glacial erosion rates of <10 m Myr-1 over the Quaternary, while lower-elevation fiord areas had average glacial erosion rates of 10-30 m Myr-1. The modeled patterns of glacial erosion and ice cover across eastern Baffin suggest that the Laurentide Ice Sheet transitioned from uniformly erosive early in the Quaternary, to a selectively erosive ice sheet drained by numerous fiord systems. This transition in ice dynamics likely allowed higher elevation locations to escape the influence of an erosive Laurentide Ice Sheet and to support thinner, cold-based, non-erosive ice caps, preserving high-elevation upland regions across Baffin Island. Concentrations of 10Be and 26Al and modelled erosion indicate that upland sites on central Baffin Island spent more time under erosive ice than upland locations on Cumberland Peninsula, suggesting that the LIS may have transitioned to a more selectively erosive ice sheet earlier on Cumberland Peninsula.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026NE-411260

© Copyright 2026 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.