Glacimarine environments

de J. A. Dowdeswell

This volume examines the processes responsible for sedimentation in modern glaciomarine environments, and how such modern studies can be used as analogues in the interpretation of ancient glaciomarine sequences. Sediments released from glaciers grounded in tidewater, floating ice shelves, ice tongues, icebergs and sea ice form complex sequences governed by glaciological, oceanographic, sedimentary and biogenic controls. Ten per cent of the world's oceans and epicontinental seas contain such active glacimarine environments, but during Cenozoic glacial periods this area was doubled. This book will, therefore, be of relevance to all scientists concerned with high and middle latitude marine environments. The early chapters are concerned largely with processes of sedimentation in modern glacimarine environments; examples are drawn from Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Svalbard and Antarctica. Studies of ancient sequences, both Cenozoic and pre-Cenozoic, from the Barents Sea, Greenland, Sweden, Alaska and the northwest European continental shelf, form the latter part of the book.