Module 2: Ice Age

The Pleistocene Period:

● Began roughly 2.5 million years ago marking the beginning of the Quaternary period
● Humanoid species such as the Australipithecus and other homo species, and finally,
homo sapiens, began to evolve into anatomically modern forms during the Pleistocene
and subsequently migrated around the world
● Pleistocene marked the most recent glacial episode in the northern hemisphere with ice
sheets expanding south roughly 40 degrees latitude around New York City in the United
States
● Global Plate distribution by this time was pretty much stabilized and glaciers have
advanced to around 40 degrees north
● Ice sheets up to 3 kilometers in thickness covered parts of Canada and Europe on
several occasions

Orbital Controls on Glaciation:

● Earth orbits the sun in an ellipse
● There are certain departures from this general shape due to the gravitational pull of the
sun and the moon on the Earth’s equator
○ Orbital centricity, axial precision, and axial tilt
○ These among many other factors contribute to the amount of solar insulation
that Earth receives and influences in turn, the 26,000 year cycle of glaciations

Orbital Eccentricity
● The departure of the Earth’s elliptical orbit from a circular shape.
○ This is what influences our solstices/equinoxes

●
● Earth does not orbit the sun in a perfect circle
 ● A departure from this circle is known as an ellipse
○ An oblong shape that more closely resembles our Earth’s orbit
○ This influences the summer and winter solstices and equinoxes

Axial Precession:

●
● The slow and continuous change in orientation of Earth’s rotational axis.
● Cause by gravitational pull on the Earth by the sun and moon
● Making a full circle every 25,000 years as a result of gravitational pull from sun and
moon on the earth’s equator

Axial Tilt:

●
● The angle of tilt between the Earth’s rotational axis and orbital axis.
● The Earth’s axial tilt is the reason we have seasons
● Currently at a tilt of 23.5 degrees
● Influences the season length, average surface temperature, and many other reverse
characteristics and can influence glacial and interglacial cycles
Glacial Cycles:

●
● As global temperatures dropped, this allowed large glaciers to form at the poles over
thousands of years
● As glaciers grow they take up larger volumes of water and as a result of this, sea levels
drop
● At the peak of the wisconsin ice age, glaciers over 3 kilometers in thickness covered
Canada
● As glaciers advanced and retreated across the landscape, they scoured off many layers
of rock, leaving deep lines in the bedrock and created millions of lakes now found in
Canada

Maximum Extent of Ice:

 ●
● Maximum glaciation in the wisconsin ice age was reached approximately 18,000 to
25,000 years ago
● Virtually all of Canada was covered by the combined Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice
Sheets
● In eastern North America, the ice reached its maximum extent south of what is now the
Great Lakes

Global Sea Level Drop:

●
● There is a fixed amount of water on the Earth
 ● As glaciers advanced they took up large volumes of water, estimated at roughly
100,000,000 cubic kilometers, causing global sea levels to drop around 120 meters
● As the glaciers retreated and melted, this water contributed to sea levels rising to pre
glacial levels

Glacial Landforms:

●
● Glacial landforms result from various processes
● These include
○ Erosion by ice/meltwater
○ Deposition by ice/meltwater
● Materials such as clay, rock, gravel, etc, turned till may be sorted or stratified
● Or they can be heterogeneous mixtures deposited by running water
● This is referred to as unconsolidated material

Drumlins

●
● Elongated hills in the shape of an inverted spoon formed by the advance of a glacier on
the underlying unconsolidated material
● Drumlins can be found throughout Southern Ontario, with the largest concentration in
the Peterborough area

Moraines:
 ●
● Ridges or mounds of glacial material deposited close to the ice margin, often associated
with uneven topography

Eskers:

●
● Winding ridges of stratified sand and gravel frequently kilometers long, possibly formed
from meltwater running through glacial tunnels

The Great Lakes:

●
● The retreat of the glaciers around 10,000 years ago created depressions in the
landscape that were then filled with meltwater
● This is the origin of the Great Lakes
● The Canadian Great Lake contain 21% of the world’s surface freshwater
The Canadian Shield:
● Was originally a mountain chain,
● Has since been worn down by erosional processes
● The retreat of glaciers across the roots of the mountains scraped off the rock layers to
expose the underlying bedrock
● Erratics or drop stones, were deposited by retreating ice
● These are geographically and geologically unrelated to their situation
● The largest erratic in Southern Ontario is the Bleasdale Boulder, located near Trenton.
● It weighs 33,000 tons and is 8 meters in height

Permafrost:
● Subsurface material that has remained in a frozen state for 2 or more years
● Much of Northern Canada is either continuous (always frozen) or discontinuous (frozen
part of the year)
● Most of the infrastructure in the far north is built on permafrost