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Timing of Late Quaternary glaciation along the southwestern slopes of the Qilian Shan, Tibet |
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| Authors: | LEWIS A. OWEN JOEL Q. SPENCER MA HAIZHOU PATRICK L. BARNARD EDWARD DERBYSHIRE ROBERT C. FINKEL MARC W. CAFFEE ZENG YONG NIAN |
| Affiliation: | Department of Earth Science, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA;Institute of Saline Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, Qinghai, P.R. China;Centre for Quaternary Research, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey YW20 0EX, UK;Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA;Department of Physics/PRIME Laboratory, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA |
| Abstract: | Moraines along the southwestern slopes of the Qilian Shan were dated using cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) surface exposure techniques to help define the timing of glaciation in northernmost Tibet. The CRN data show glaciers extending 5–10 km beyond their present positions during the global Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and probably maintained at their maximum extent until the Lateglacial. These data help support the view that glaciers throughout Tibet and the Himalaya were maintained at or near their maximum LGM extent until the Lateglacial. An optically stimulated luminescence date of 11.8 ± 1.0 ka on silt that caps a latero-frontal moraine shows that glaciers had retreated significantly by the end of the Pleistocene and that loess was beginning to form in this region in response to the changing climate during and after the Younger Dryas Stade. |
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