The drainage of Lake Ojibway in glaciolacustrine sediments of northern Ontario and Quebec, Canada

Physical evidence for the drainage of glacial lakes remains relatively rare in depositional records, giving rise to much debate on the location of outlets and discharge pathways, as well as on the climate impact of the attendant meltwater forcing. Lake Ojibway developed following the withdrawal of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in northern Ontario and Quebec, Canada. The late-stage evolution of this large ice-dammed lake was influenced by the complex dynamics of the retreating ice margin, which highly complicates the identification of the termination of Lake Ojibway in glaciolacustrine sediment records. Here, we document the composition of sections of rhythmites that contain in their upper part an anomalously thick and whitish bed (10-15cm) that is in turn overlain by approximate to 1m of faintly bedded rhythmites. Grain-size analyses showed that the thick whitish bed consists primarily of fine to coarse silt (2-63m), contrasting with the lower and upper rhythmites that are largely dominated by clay (<2m). The detrital carbonate content of the thick silt bed is characterized by consistently high values (2.5 to 2.8%), whereas the bounding rhythmites show lower and highly variable values. Oxygen isotope measurements further show a marked change going from typical glacial meltwater values (approximate to -29.6 to -27.7 parts per thousand; VSMOW) for the lower rhythmites and the silt bed to modern-like meteoric values (-18.4 to -14.6 parts per thousand) for the uppermost rhythmites. These data suggest that this marker bed may be associated with a major drawdown event that possibly corresponds to the final drainage of Lake Ojibway. AMS radiocarbon dating of ostracods extracted from the drainage bed also documents an important hardwater effect within the Ojibway basin.