A REVIEW OF LICHENOMETRIC DATING OF GLACIAL MORAINES IN ALASKA

In Alaska, lichenometry continues to be an important technique for dating late Holocene moraines. Research completed during the 1970s through the early 1990s developed lichen dating curves for five regions in the Arctic and subarctic mountain ranges beyond altitudinal and latitudinal treelines. Although these dating curves are still in use across Alaska, little progress has been made in the past decade in updating or extending them or in developing new curves. Comparison of results from recent moraine-dating studies based on these five lichen dating curves with tree-ring based glacier histories from southern Alaska shows generally good agreement, albeit with greater scatter in the lichen-based ages. Cosmogenic surface-exposure dating of Holocene moraines has the potential to test some of the assumptions of the lichenometric technique and to facilitate the development of a new set of improved lichen dating curves for Alaska.     

A Hornblende Basalt from Western Mexico: Water-saturated Phase Relations Constrain a Pressure-Temperature Window of Eruptibility

Trachybasalt scoria from a cinder cone near the Mexican volcanicfront contain phenocrysts of olivine with chromite inclusions,apatite, augite and hornblende, with microphenocrysts of plagioclase.The water-saturated phase relations reproduce the phenocrystassemblage between 1040°C and 970°C with water contentsof between 2·5 and 4·5% (50–150 MPa). Theabsence of biotite phenocrysts in the scoria places a tightconstraint on the pressure–temperature conditions of phenocrystequilibration, as there is only a small zone where biotite doesnot accompany hornblende in the experiments. Diluting the fluidphase with CO₂ changes the composition of the olivine, indicatingthat CO₂ was only a minor component of the fluid of the scoria.Hornblende is stable to 1040°C at oxygen fugacities of NNO+ 2 (where NNO is the nickel–nickel oxide buffer), butat lower oxygen fugacities, the upper limit is 990°C. Thereis a progressive increase in crystallinity in experimental runsas both pressure and temperature decrease. Isobaric plots ofcrystallinity show that the onset of hornblende crystallizationinvolves a reaction relation, and also results in a marked     

Remobilization of Andesite Magma by Intrusion of Mafic Magma at the Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat, West Indies

The 1995–1999 eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano,Montserrat, has produced a crystal-rich andesite containingquench-textured mafic inclusions, which show evidence of havingbeen molten when incorporated into the host magma. Individualcrystals in the andesite record diverse histories. Amphibolephenocrysts vary from pristine and unaltered to strongly oxidizedand pseudomorphed by anhydrous reaction products. Plagioclasephenocrysts are commonly reverse zoned, often with dusty sievetextures. Reverse zoned rims are also common on orthopyroxenephenocrysts. Pyroxene geothermometry gives an average temperatureof 858 ± 20°C for orthopyroxene phenocryst cores,whereas reverse zoned rims record temperatures from about 880to 1050°C. The heterogeneity in mineral rim compositions,zoning patterns and textures is interpreted as reflecting non-uniformreheating and remobilization of the resident magma body by intrusionof hotter mafic magma. Convective remobilization results inmixing together of phenocrysts that have experienced differentthermal histories, depending on proximity to the intruding maficmagma. The low temperature and high crystallinity are interpretedas reflecting the presence of a cool, highly crystalline magmabody beneath the Soufriere Hills volcano. The petrological observations,in combination with data on seismicity, extrusion rate and SO₂fluxes, indicate that the current eruption was triggered byrecent influx of hot mafic magma. KEY WORDS: Montserrat; eruption; magma mixing; mafic inclusion; sieve texture     

Estimates of effective stress beneath a modern West Antarctic ice stream from till preconsolidation and void ratio

Preconsolidation stress recorded in subglacial sediments provides important information about subglacial effective stresses. It is commonly used to reconstruct past effective stresses from sediments left after ice retreat. In this article, we use properties of sub‐ice‐stream till samples to estimate effective stresses beneath a modern West Antarctic ice stream. Two previous estimates of sub‐ice‐stream effective stress were derived for the Upstream B (UpB) area of Ice Stream B from shear wave velocities (50 ± 40 kPa, Blankenship et al 1987) and borehole water level measurements (63 ± 24 kPa, Engelhardt & Kamb 1997). However, geotechnical tests performed on samples of the UpB till have shown that if subjected to effective stress of 50–63 kPa this till would have significantly lower porosity (?0.32–0.35) and higher strength (?‐22–28 kPa) than it apparently has in situ (?0.4 and ?2kPa). We derive new estimates of sub‐ice‐stream effective stress using: (1) Casagrande's construction applied to the results of six confined uniaxial tests, and (2) a combination of void‐ratio data for 51 till samples and 3 experimentally constrained equations describing compressibility of the UpB till under normal consolidation, overconsolidation and in the critical state. Casagrande's method yields an upper bound on effective stress of 25 kPa for four till samples and values of 13, and 4.4kPa for two other samples. The void‐ratio approach gives 11.7 ± 2.6 (normal consolidation), 18.3 ± 4.4 (overconsolidation) and 2.0 ± 0.8 kPa (critical state). These new, lower estimates of effective stress are consistent with the low till strength that has been independently measured and inferred from recent theoretical ice‐stream models. Our interpretation of data on till void ratio in terms of sub‐ice‐stream effective stress means that we can qualitatively evaluate the nature of the vertical distribution of this stress in the UpB till layer. We infer that in the sampled top 3 m of till the effective‐stress distribution is non‐hydrostatic, probably close to lithostatic. The results may be useful in future modeling of ice‐stream behavior and may aid efforts to delineate paleo‐ice streams based on their geologic record.