Glacial Deposition Along an Ice-Contact Slope: An Example from the Southern Lake District, Chile

Glacially derived sediments and structures vary systematically with topographic position along ice-contact slopes near the margin of former temperate piedmont glaciers in the southern Lake District, Chile. Features along lower positions of the slopes include glaciolacustrine sediments and large-scalethrusting. Middle slope features include low-angle subglacial thrusting of thin slices of lacustrine sediment. Upper slope features include high-angle thrusting, and lodgement and flow till. Locally, the same ordering of these features occurs in vertical sequence.
A common theme that unifies the processes represented by these features is the distribution of hydrostatic pressure. Thicker ice (producing higher glacier overburden pressures) and aquicludes of fine-grained sediments toward the center of the basin result in high hydrostatic pressures, whereas thin ice and porous out-wash reduce these pressures at the top of the ice-contact slopes.However, such a distribution cannot completely explain the observed vertical sequences; hence, local variations in hydrostatic pressure because of lithologic contrasts probably play a role. Nowhere along the ice-contact slope are pervasively deformed glacial sediments observed; therefore they cannot be invoked to explain the low glacier profiles of these piedmont glacier lobes.