Investigating absolute chronologies of glacial advances in the NW sector of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet with terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclides

Geologic mapping in Yukon Territory, Canada, over the past 100 years has revealed a consistent pattern of diminishing Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS) extent during successively younger glaciations. Although this pattern is generally accepted, there is still much uncertainty about the number of glaciations, their ages, and the dynamics of the different lobes that constituted the digitate ice sheet margin, their subglacial thermal regimes, and ice thicknesses. We address uncertainties in the timing of glaciation using cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating at key localities that straddle several major lobes of the CIS in west-central Yukon Territory. Differences in exposure duration within what are thought to be the same map units are perhaps due to inheritance (older than expected), but more likely result from postglacial shielding (younger than expected) or surface erosion. Despite a significant spread in exposure durations on moraines and within map units, and tending to rely on longest exposure durations on moraines due to postglacial degradation and shielding, our results indicate that the McConnell glacial advance occurred during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 2, judging from oldest minimum apparent exposure ages of 15.7 ± 1.5 and 17.7 ± 1.6 ka, a Gladstone glacial advance occurred before 51.8 ± 4.7 ka (MIS 4) and Reid glacial advances before 79.8 ± 7.3 and 82.8 ± 7.5 ka (consistent with MIS 6). Traces of even older glacial advances predate 100 ka (107.5 ± 9.9–154.3 ± 14.2 ka).