Faint traces of high Arctic glaciations: an early Holocene ice‐front fluctuation in Bolterdalen, Svalbard

Raised marine beach gravel at 62 m a.s.l. in Bolterdalen indicates that the inner part of Adventfjorden, central Spitsbergen, was ice-free shortly before 10 025±160yr BP. A glacier advanced across the regressive, frozen beach terraces and into shallow water, 58 m above the present sea level, where a small wave-influenced ice-contact delta was formed, 9775±125 yr BP. Maximum ice-front position was reached 9625±95 yr BP, 7 km outside the present ice margin. The advance was climatically forced and of several decades' duration, as seen from abundant molluscs growing in the prograding foreset beds. Today, the beaches appear as a continuous regressive sequence with no geomorphic evidence of the former ice margin. Sedimentological studies show, however, that a thin (≤1 m) deformation till was emplaced, the substrate was subglacially sheared to a depth of 1 m, and elongated clasts in the beach gravel were reoriented in an ice-flow parallel direction. The glacial deposits and structures, formed within 200 m from the ice front, highlight some important aspects of subglacial to ice-marginal processes in permafrost terrain. As the dead ice melted, the released debris was redistributed into thin sediment sheets down to 40 m a.s.l., which means that the postglacial meltwater-controlled reworking lasted c. 500 years. Similar isolated depocentra may be a key for future identifications of former ice margins at high latitudes.