Evidence for a late glacial advance near the beginning of the Younger Dryas in western New York State: An event postdating the record for local Laurentide ice sheet recession

Abstract

Widespread evidence of an unrecognized late glacial advance across preexisting moraines in western New York is confirmed by 40 14C ages and six new optically stimulated luminescence analyses between the Genesee Valley and the Cattaraugus Creek basin of eastern Lake Erie. The Late Wisconsin chronology is relatively unconstrained by local dating of moraines between Pennsylvania and Lake Ontario. Few published 14C ages record discrete events, unlike evidence in the upper Great Lakes and New England. The new 14C ages from wood in glacial tills along Buttermilk Creek south of Springville, New York, and reevaluation of numerous 14C ages from miscellaneous investigations in the Genesee Valley document a significant glacial advance into Cattaraugus and Livingston Counties between 13,000 and 13,300 cal yr B.P., near the Greenland Interstadial 1b (GI-1b) cooling leading into the transition from the Bölling-Alleröd to the Younger Dryas. The chronology from four widely distributed sites indicates that a Late Wisconsin advance spread till discontinuously over the surface, without significantly modifying the preexisting glacial topography. A short-lived advance by a partially grounded ice shelf best explains the evidence. The advance, ending 43 km south of Rochester and a similar distance south of Buffalo, overlaps the revised chronology for glacial Lake Iroquois, now considered to extend from ca. 14,800–13,000 cal yr B.P. The spread of the radiocarbon ages is similar to the well-known Two Creeks Forest Bed, which equates the event with the Two Rivers advance in Wisconsin.

A late-glacial lake-effect climate regime and abundant tamarack in the Great Lakes Region, North America

“…At the wind interface, the extra moisture in both winds plus the higher temperature in the westerlies and lower temperature in the easterlies produced copious amounts of precipitation in the HEOL and EOL-AP. An ice advance in the western EOL-AP at 13.3-13.0 ka, the end of P1late into the hiatus, is proposed by Young et al (2020). Those dates were estimated from findings at sites along the Genesee River and Cattaraugus Creek floodplains in the western AP, but the 2σ ranges of calibrated dates of wood and bone are ca.…”

“…A possible alternative to an ice advance may have been increased precipitation and significant but isolated ice accumulations on the floodplains and more variable terrain. The suggested minimum ARWs plus ice accumulation and permafrost in both the EOL-AP and on the Niagara Peninsula (NP; Miller, 1973;Edwards et al, 1985;Tinkler and Pengelly, 1994;Young et al, 2020) in P1late suggest that the expansion of Lake Iroquois and reduction of ELE may have pushed the wind interface farther south onto the EOL-AP. The minimum ARWs and possible maximum ice accumulation on the EOL-AP (Young et al, 2020) date to around the end of P1late and are also coeval with a brief but intense outburst of meltwater from Lake Agassiz that flowed briefly into ELE sometime between 13.2 and 12.9 ka and may have contributed to a cold and moist climate during the end of P1late and into the hiatus (Morgan, 1972;Eschman and Karrow, 1985;Farrand and Drexler, 1985;Teller, 1987;Tinkler et al, 1992;Rayburn et al, 2011;Leydet et al, 2018).…”

Projections of Landscape Evolution on a 10,000 Year Timescale With Assessment and Partitioning of Uncertainty Sources

“…Scenarios for the incision of Buttermilk Creek are based on the 13 ka to present incision history, and local geomorphic and chronologic constraints on paleotopography (M. Wilson & Young, 2018; Young et al., 2020). Buttermilk Creek experienced alternating periods of fast (∼0.007 m yr −1 ) and slow (∼0.002 m yr −1 ) incision, with an average incision rate over the past 13 ka of ∼0.004 m yr −1 (Figure 3).…”

“…The site's recent geological history is relatively well known. Advances of the Laurentide ice sheet during the last glacial cycle left behind a low‐relief, valley‐filling surface that caps a sequence of glaciogenic sediments (M. Wilson & Young, 2018; Young et al., 2020). After the final deglaciation of the area at ∼13 ka, the stream network incised this surface, creating a network of canyons, ravines, and gullies (Figure 1).…”

“…After the final deglaciation of the area at ∼13 ka, the stream network incised this surface, creating a network of canyons, ravines, and gullies (Figure 1). These include Buttermilk Creek, the major stream that serves as the outlet to the study watershed, which has incised up to ∼50 m into young glacial deposits (Fakundiny, 1985; M. Wilson & Young, 2018; Young et al., 2020). While most of Buttermilk Creek's recent incision has been into the glaciogenic sediments, sandstone bedrock is now exposed in parts of the channel (M. Wilson & Young, 2018).…”