Timing and significance of Late-glacial and Holocene cirque glaciation in the Sierra Nevada, California

Abstract

Mapping and radiocarbon dates of cirque moraines in the Sierra Nevada demonstrate that the last significant pre-Little Ice Age glacier advance in the range, the Recess Peak, resulted from snowline lowering roughly twice that of the Matthes (Little Ice Age) advance, and that the Recess Peak advance is late Pleistocene in age. We mapped Recess Peak and Matthes deposits in 64 cirques along a profile of the main Sierran crest that spans the north-south limits of ‘Neoglacial’ deposits in the range. Equilibrium-line altitudes for the reconstructed Recess Peak glaciers vary greatly but coherently with those of the Matthes advance. The variability of both sets of deposits reflects strong topographic influences on snow accumulation and ablation patterns in their deep cirques.

Tephrochronology and radiocarbon dates from lake-sediment cores provide limits on the timing of the two advances. Previous work documenting the absence of a young, regionally extensive tephra on Matthes moraines in the central Sierra demonstrates that they formed after ∼700 ¹⁴C years BP (∼650 cal. years BP). The age of the Recess Peak advance has been less certain; we therefore collected and dated sediment cores from lakes dammed behind terminal moraines correlating to the Recess Peak advance in four widely separated drainages along the Sierran crest (north to south): South Fork American River, Lee Vining Creek, Middle Fork San Joaquin River, and Bishop Creek. Twenty-three high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates on gyttja, peat, and macrofossils from the cores are internally consistent and demonstrate that the Recess Peak advance, previously thought to be of late Holocene age (∼2500 years BP), ended before 11,190±70 ¹⁴C years BP (∼13,100±85 cal. years BP). Recess Peak is therefore late Pleistocene in age and probably predates the North Atlantic Younger Dryas climatic reversal. The absence of any glacial deposits on the bedrock between the Recess Peak and Matthes deposits indicates that: (1) any advance related to the Younger Dryas event in central California was smaller than the Matthes advance; (2) the Matthes advance was the most extensive, and possibly the only, Neoglacial event in the range; and (3) climate in the Sierra between ∼13,000 cal. years BP and 650 cal. years BP was apparently too warm and/or dry to support glaciers larger than those of the Little Ice Age. Other mapping indicates that the Recess Peak is the first significant glacier advance after retreat of Tioga (local late-Wisconsin maximum) glaciers. These results suggest a regionally variable climate in western North America during the Younger Dryas event, because glaciers appear to have expanded in the Canadian Rockies at that time.

The new Recess Peak age limits, combined with other dated lake cores, indicate that the Sierra was essentially deglaciated by 14,000–15,000 cal. years BP (∼12,000–13,000 ¹⁴C years BP), substantially earlier than previously estimated. This finding indicates that current production rates of some in situ cosmogenic nuclides, calibrated on an assumed deglaciation of the range at 11,000 cal. years BP (∼10,000 14C years BP), may be systematically too high by as much as 20%.