Morphology and Sediments of the Emergent Ontario Coast of James Bay, Canada

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Abstract
Ontario is a maritime province, although this is not commonly realized. It has more than 2500 km of coasts along the Great Lakes and 1130 km along the brackish waters of James and Hudson Bay. The coasts are underlain by a variety of bedrock types, from hard crystalline Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks, to Paleozoic soft shales and fractured carbonates. The shores of James Bay in particular are rapidly emerging (70–100 cm/century) as response to residual post-glacial isostatic rebound. The shores are flat (order of 0.5-1.0 m/km), and because of their northern trend they contain the transition from a southern forested permafrost-free area to a northern tundra area with continuous permafrost. These coasts enclose one of the largest wetlands of the world, the Hudson Bay Lowland, where sequences of forested beach ridges and old promonotories record the different stages of Holocene emergence of the land. Shallow wide embayments mostly underlain by marine clay of an early post-glacial Tyrrell sea have been occupied by large river throughout the Holocene. The Hudson/James Bay is one of the largest inland seas of the world. James Bay has cold brackish waters which are often renewed by large amounts of fresh water discharged by rivers, and by marine water exchanged with the Hudson Bay. Ice covers the area for approximately six months of the year, and pack-ice may be driven by wind against northern Ontario shores well into July. No single coastal feature is unique to this area, but associations of features are very much so. The shore of James Bay can be subdivided into four major tracts:

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