Neoglacial history of Robson Glacier, British Columbia

As glaciers in the Canadian Rockies recede, glacier forefields continue to yield subfossil wood from sites overridden by these glaciers during the Holocene. Robson Glacier in British Columbia formerly extended below tree line, and recession over the last century has progressively revealed a number of buried forest sites that are providing one of the more complete records of glacier history in the Canadian Rockies during the latter half of the Holocene. The glacier was advancing ca. 5.5 km upvalley of the Little Ice Age terminus ca. 5.26 cal ka BP, at sites ca. 2 km upvalley ca. 4.02 cal ka BP and ca. 3.55 cal ka BP, and 0.5-1 km upvalley between 1140 and 1350 A.D. There is also limited evidence based on detrital wood of an additional period of glacier advance ca. 3.24 cal ka BP. This record is more similar to glacier histories further west in British Columbia than elsewhere in the Rockies and provides the first evidence for a post-Hypsithermal glacier advance at ca. 5.26 cal ka BP in the Rockies. The utilization of the wiggle-matching approach using multiple 14C dates from sample locations determined by dendrochronological analyses enabled the recognition of 14C outliers and an increase in the precision and accuracy of the dating of glacier advances.Fil: Luckman, B.H.. University Of Western Ontario; CanadáFil: Masiokas, Mariano Hugo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Nicolussi, K.. University of Innsbruck; Austri

Spatiotemporal analysis of channel wall erosion in ephemeral torrents using tree roots-An example from the Patagonian Andes

This paper presents absolute ages for flash floods and related sediment entrainment in headwater catchments to construct a spatiotemporal framework of process dynamics and locations of major areas of channel wall erosion. The most reliable method for dating erosion is through dendrogeomorphic studies of exposed tree roots. Based on the analysis of erosion signals in root-ring records we documented a time series of channel wall erosion and successfully dated 21 erosive flash flood events since A.D. 1870 in an ephemeral gully in the Patagonian Andes. The study was performed with roots from Austrocedrus chilensis, Nothofagus dombeyi, and Pseudotsuga menziesii. Results demonstrate the potential of root analyses for the determination of major areas of sediment entrainment. In addition, we show that the position of damage within individual root rings allows inferences about the seasonal timing of flash flood effects and thus an assessment of possible meteorological triggers of erosive events, short intense storms occurring primarily in austral fall and late winter in this case. The approach presented adds significantly to the documentation of sediment entrainment and facilitates identification of areas of rapid erosion in small, remote headwater catchments with ephemeral flash flood activity. GeoRef Subject Argentina Cenozoic channels geochronology Andes Holocene Patagonian Andes sedimentation South America tree rings hydrology Patagonia geomorphology upper Holocene Quaternar

Little ice age fluctuations of Glaciar Río Manso in the north Patagonian Andes

Little Ice Age (LIA) fluctuations of Glaciar Río Manso, north Patagonian Andes, Argentina are studied using information from previous work and dendrogeomorphological analyses of living and subfossil wood. The most extensive LIA expansion occurred between the late 1700s and the 1830-1840s. Except for a massive older frontal moraine system apparently predating ca. 2240 14C yr BP and a small section of a south lateral moraine ridge that is at least 300 yr old, the early nineteenth century advance overrode surficial evidence of any earlier LIA glacier events. Over the past 150 yr the gently sloping, heavily debris-covered lower glacier tongue has thinned significantly, but several short periods of readvance or stasis have been identified and tree-ring dated to the mid-1870s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s, 1950s, and the mid-1970s. Ice mass loss has increased in recent years due to calving into a rapidly growing proglacial lake. The neighboring debris-free and land-based Glaciar Frías has also retreated markedly in recent years but shows substantial differences in the timing of the peak LIA advance (early 1600s). This indicates that site-specific factors can have a significant impact on the resulting glacier records and should thus be considered carefully in the development and assessment of regional glacier chronologies.Fil: Masiokas, Mariano Hugo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Luckman, B.H.. University of Western Ontario; CanadáFil: Villalba, Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Ripalta, Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Rabassa, Jorge Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentin

Blue intensity for dendroclimatology:the BC blues: a case study from British Columbia, Canada

Maximum latewood density (MXD) is a strong proxy of summer temperatures. Despite this, there is a paucity of long MXD chronologies in the Northern Hemisphere, which limits large-scale tree-ring-based reconstructions of past temperature which are dominated by ring-width (RW) data – a weaker temperature proxy at inter-annual time-scales. This paucity likely results from the relative expense of measuring MXD and the lack of laboratories with the facilities to measure it. Herein, we test the ability of a relatively new, less expensive, tree-ring parameter, Blue Intensity (BI), to act as a surrogate parameter for MXD. BI was measured on Engelmann spruce samples from British Columbia where MXD had previously been measured to allow direct comparison between the two parameters. Signal strength analyses indicate that 8 MXD series were needed to acquire a robust mean chronology while BI needed 14. Utilising different detrending methods and parameter choices (RW + MXD vs RW + BI), a suite of reconstruction variants was developed. The explained variance from the regression modelling (1901–1995) of May–August maximum temperatures ranged from 52% to 55%. Validation tests over the earlier 1870–1900 period could not statistically distinguish between the different variants, although spectral analysis identified more lower frequency information extant in the MXD-based reconstructions – although this result was sensitive to the detrending method used. Ultimately, despite the MXD-based reconstruction explaining slightly more of the climatic variance, statistically robust reconstructions of past summer temperatures were also derived using BI. These results suggest that there is great potential in utilising BI for dendroclimatology in place of MXD data. However, more experimentation is needed to understand (1) how well BI can capture centennial and lower frequency information and (2) what biases may result from wood discolouration, either from species showing a distinct heartwood/sapwood boundary or from partly decayed sub-fossil samples