Quaternary events in the Elkwater Lake area of southeastern Alberta

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Abstract
New data necessitate revisions in the Quaternary chronology of the Elkwater Lake area. Relicts of post-Middle Miocene preglacial erosion surfaces descend to the north and south from the Middle Miocene depositional surface on the Cypress Hills plateau. Both sets of surfaces are marked by oxidized weathering zones, locally culminating in relicts of preglacial paleosols. Both surfaces are overlain by a loess replete with cryogenic imprints. Deposition of this loess with cryogenic imprints shortly predates arrival of the Green Lake glacier at its terminus.The Green Lake end moraine marks the maximum extent of Laurentide ice in this area. Features previously attributed to the older Elkwater glacier can be explained with reference to proglacial meltwater action associated with the Green Lake glacier. The concept of Elkwater drift is no longer valid.Younger loesses, called upper loess, mantle nonglaciated terrain and the Green Lake end moraine and began accumulating just before Glacier Peak tephra was deposited (ca. 12 000 years ago). Because there is no evidence of weathering on the Green Lake end moraine beneath the upper loess, Green Lake drift dates from the late Wisconsinan. Most of the upper loess was deposited during the early Holocene and some since the Mazama volcanic eruption, 6600 years ago.Elkwater Lake reached its highest postglacial level, i.e., at least 6.6 m above the present level, well after the Mazama eruption, before spilling across the Green Lake end moraine into the Ross Creek system. This event irrevocably changed the regimen of Ross Creek, probably to its confluence with the South Saskatchewan River, at Medicine Hat.

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