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Meltwater drainage beneath ice sheets is a fundamental consideration for understanding ice–bed conditions and bed-modulated ice flow, with potential impacts on terminus behavior and ice-shelf mass balance. While contemporary observations reveal the presence of basal water movement in the subglacial environment and inferred styles of drainage, the geological record of former ice sheets, including sediments and landforms on land and the seafloor, aids in understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of efficient and inefficient drainage systems and their impact on ice-sheet behavior. We highlight the past decade of advances in geological studies that focus on providing process-based information on subglacial hydrology of ice sheets, how these studies inform theory, numerical models and contemporary observations, and address the needs for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meltwater drainage beneath ice sheets is a fundamental consideration for understanding ice–bed conditions and bed-modulated ice flow, with potential impacts on terminus behavior and ice-shelf mass balance. While contemporary observations reveal the presence of basal water movement in the subglacial environment and inferred styles of drainage, the geological record of former ice sheets, including sediments and landforms on land and the seafloor, aids in understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of efficient and inefficient drainage systems and their impact on ice-sheet behavior. We highlight the past decade of advances in geological studies that focus on providing process-based information on subglacial hydrology of ice sheets, how these studies inform theory, numerical models and contemporary observations, and address the needs for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience of a marine-based ice sheet is strongly governed by the stability of its grounding lines, which are in turn sensitive to ocean-induced melting, calving, and flotation of the ice margin. Since the grounding line is also a sedimentary environment, the constructional landforms that are built here may reflect elements of the processes governing this dynamic and potentially vulnerable environment. Here we analyse a large dataset (n D6275) of grounding line landforms mapped on the western Ross Sea continental shelf from high-resolution geophysical data. The population is divided into two distinct morphotypes by their morphological properties: recessional moraines (consistently narrow, closely spaced, low amplitude, symmetric, and straight) and grounding zone wedges (broad, widely spaced, higher amplitude, asymmetric, sinuous, and highly variable). Landform morphotypes cluster with alike forms that transition abruptly between morphotypes both spatially and within a retreat sequence. Their form and distribution are largely independent of water depth, bed slope, and position relative to glacial troughs. Similarly, we find no conclusive evidence for morphology being determined by the presence or absence of an ice shelf. Instead, grounding zone wedge construction is favoured by a higher sediment flux and a longer-held grounding position. We propose two endmember modes of grounding line retreat: (1) an irregular mode, characterised by grounding zone wedges with longer standstills and accompanied by larger-magnitude retreat events, and (2) a steady mode, characterised by moraine sequences that instead represent more frequent but smaller-magnitude retreat events. We suggest that while sediment accumulation and progradation may prolong the stability of a grounding line position, progressive development of sinuosity in the grounding line due to spatially variable sediment delivery likely destabilises the grounding position by enhanced ablation, triggering large-magnitude retreat events. Here, the concept of "stability" is multifaceted and paradoxical, and neither mode can be characterised as marking fast or slow retreat. Diagnosing grounding line stability based on landform products should be considered for a wider geographic range, yet this large dataset of landforms prompts the need to better understand the sensitivity of marine-based grounding lines to processes and feedbacks governing retreat and what stability means in the context of future grounding line behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the history of ice-sheet behaviour in the Ross Sea, Antarctica's largest drainage basin can improve our understanding of patterns and controls on marinebased ice-sheet dynamics and provide constraints for numerical ice-sheet models. Newly collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry data, combined with two decades of legacy multibeam and seismic data, are used to map glacial landforms and reconstruct palaeo ice-sheet drainage. During the Last Glacial Maximum, grounded ice reached the continental shelf edge in the eastern but not western Ross Sea. Recessional geomorphic features in the western Ross Sea indicate virtually continuous back-stepping of the icesheet grounding line. In the eastern Ross Sea, well-preserved linear features and a lack of small-scale recessional landforms signify rapid lift-off of grounded ice from the bed. Physiography exerted a first-order control on regional ice behaviour, while sea floor geology played an important subsidiary role. Previously published deglacial scenarios for Ross Sea are based on low-spatial-resolution marine data or terrestrial observations; however, this study uses high-resolution basinwide geomorphology to constrain grounding-line retreat on the continental shelf. Our analysis of retreat patterns suggests that (1) retreat from the western Ross Sea was complex due to strong physiographic controls on ice-sheet drainage; (2) retreat was asynchronous across the Ross Sea and between troughs; (3) the eastern Ross Sea largely deglaciated prior to the western Ross Sea following the formation of a large grounding-line embayment over Whales Deep; and (4) our glacial geomorphic reconstruction converges with recent numerical models that call for significant and complex East Antarctic ice sheet andWest Antarctic ice sheet contributions to the ice flow in the Ross Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lake Vättern represents a critical region geographically and dynamically in the deglaciation of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. The outlet glacier that occupied the basin and its behaviour during ice-sheet retreat were key to the development and drainage of the Baltic Ice Lake, dammed just west of the basin, yet its geometry, extent, thickness, margin dynamics, timing and sensitivity to regional retreat forcing are rather poorly known. The submerged sediment archives of Lake Vättern represent a missing component of the regional Swedish deglaciation history. Newly collected geophysical data, including high-resolution multibeam bathymetry of the lake floor and seismic reflection profiles of southern Lake Vättern, are used here together with a unique 74-m sediment record recently acquired by drill coring, and with onshore Li DAR-based geomorphological analysis, to investigate the deglacial environments and dynamics in the basin and its terrestrial environs. Five stratigraphical units comprise a thick subglacial package attributed to the last glacial period (and probably earlier), and an overlying >120-m deglacial sequence. Three distinct retreat-re-advance episodes occurred in southern Lake Vättern between the initial deglaciation and the Younger Dryas. In the most recent of these, ice overrode proglacial lake sediments and re-advanced from north of Visingsö to the southern reaches of the lake, where ice up to 400 m thick encroached on land in a lobate fashion, moulding crag-and-tail lineations and depositing till above earlier glacifluvial sediments. This event precedes the Younger Dryas, which our data reveal was probably restricted to north-central sectors of the basin. These dynamics, and their position within the regional retreat chronology, indicate a highly active ice margin during deglaciation, with retreat rates on average 175 m a−1. The pronounced topography of the Vättern basin and its deep proglacial-dammed lake are likely to have encouraged the dynamic behaviour of this major Fennoscandian outlet glacier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The varied nature of a glacial substrate has often been invoked to account for the varied distribution, arrangement and morphological expression of subglacial bedforms. The ease and rate of sediment production from the bedrock substrate, and the rheological, mechanical and hydraulic properties of the resultant subglacial sediment layer have been argued, in certain samples or settings, to account for the local-to-regional distribution of bedforms and bedform types, and varying morphological expression such as size, shape, elongation, or spatial arrangement. From locally coherent observations and relationships it is tempting to extrapolate such patterns to express a more fundamental lithological control on subglacial bedform properties and formation. Here we use a large, systematically compiled dataset (>30,000 subglacial bedforms inscribed by the Irish Ice Sheet) to explore potential lithological controls upon subglacial bedform distribution and morphological expression. We expect any lithological control upon form, size or distribution to be expressed through a spatial correlation between bedform properties and those of the bed lithology; we extract bedform morphometric and distribution statistics and underlying lithology data from datasets held in a geographic information system for comparative analyses. At ice sheet scale, i.e. considering our whole bedform population, we find no apparent relationship between the lithology of either bedrock or till substrate and bedform occurrence, density of arrangement, or size. Regional to local examples do, in contrast, exhibit some coincident changes in substrate and bedform expression. These are typically manifest as an abrupt shortening or lengthening of drumlins at a lithological boundary, superimposed upon more gradual, regional trends. However, not all local variability observed in the bedform population can be attributed to a lithological driver and, where it can be inferred, lithological control is often in tandem with, or subordinate to, other drivers such as topographic setting or ice dynamics. We propose a hierarchy of controls upon bedform form and distribution, strongly coupled to spatial scale: lithological differences can modulate local scale form and expression but bedform incidence and properties are primarily governed by ice sheet scale glaciological patterns and drivers. Only under certain (unknown) conditions at a local scale is the bedforming process sensitive to the lithological properties of the bed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Assemblages of glacial landforms of a ‘mega-scale’ are here identified in the Keewatin sector of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Large till ‘belts’ or ‘ridges’, apparent only on satellite imagery and lying beneath the drumlins, flutes and ribbed moraine which comprise the known regional glacial landform record, form extensive and coherent patterns throughout the Keewatin region. Planform and crestline mapping from remotely sensed imagery yields a mapped population of >2500 individual landforms, whose dimensions are on average ∼10 km long and ∼1.5 km wide. Based on analysis of their morphology and morphometry, their spatial arrangement and pattern, and comparison with analogues and reference populations of glacial landform types, we interpret three morphological groups of different genetic origin. Two of these are examples of currently known landform types: i) a set of heavily overprinted, i.e. non-pristine, mega-scale glacial lineations, feeding from the heart of the Keewatin region north into Queen Maud Gulf; and ii) a 350 km long moraine zone, overrun by later ice flow paths, and likely associated with the terminal position of an ice sheet prior to the final deglacial episode. A third group, comprising a significant number of the Keewatin population, does not fit any existing category of glacial landforms. Here we report a major new finding: subglacial bedforms, of a mega-scale, transverse to the palaeo-ice flow direction. Mega-scale transverse bedforms have not been previously reported from any palaeo-(or contemporary) ice sheet. Close spatial integration with the ribbed moraine population in Keewatin suggests a similar mode of genesis. The Keewatin landforms indicate there is a fundamental transverse organisation of till at a scale beyond that of conventional transverse bedforms (ribbed moraine), and with as yet unknown implications for our understanding of subglacial processes and ice-bed coupling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The ice sheet that once covered Ireland has a long history of investigation. Much prior work focussed on localised evidence-based reconstructions and ice-marginal dynamics and chronologies, with less attention paid to an ice sheet wide view of the first order properties of the ice sheet: centres of mass, ice divide structure, ice flow geometry and behaviour and changes thereof. In this paper we focus on the latter aspect and use our new, countrywide glacial geomorphological mapping of the Irish landscape (>39 000 landforms), and our analysis of the palaeo-glaciological significance of observed landform assemblages (article Part 1), to build an ice sheet reconstruction yielding these fundamental ice sheet properties. We present a seven stage model of ice sheet evolution, from initiation to demise, in the form of palaeo-geographic maps. An early incursion of ice from Scotland likely coalesced with local ice caps and spread in a south-westerly direction 200km across Ireland. A semi-independent Irish Ice Sheet was then established during ice sheet growth, with a branching ice divide structure whose main axis migrated up to 140km from the west coast towards the east. Ice stream systems converging on Donegal Bay in the west and funnelling through the North Channel and Irish Sea Basin in the east emerge as major flow components of the maximum stages of glaciation. Ice cover is reconstructed as extending to the continental shelf break. The Irish Ice Sheet became autonomous (i.e. separate from the British Ice Sheet) during deglaciation and fragmented into multiple ice masses, each decaying towards the west. Final sites of demise were likely over the mountains of Donegal, Leitrim and Connemara. Patterns of growth and decay of the ice sheet are shown to be radically different: asynchronous and asymmetric in both spatial and temporal domains. We implicate collapse of the ice stream system in the North Channel – Irish Sea Basin in driving such asymmetry, since rapid collapse would sever the ties between the British and Irish Ice Sheets and drive flow configuration changes in response. Enhanced calving and flow acceleration in response to rising relative sea level is speculated to have undermined the integrity of the ice stream system, precipitating its collapse and driving the reconstructed pattern of ice sheet evolution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The glacial geomorphological record provides an effective means to reconstruct former ice sheets at ice sheet scale. In this paper we document our approach and methods for synthesising and interpreting a glacial landform record for its palaeo-ice flow information, applied to landforms of Ireland. New, countrywide glacial geomorphological maps of Ireland comprising >39,000 glacial landforms are interpreted for the spatial, glaciodynamic and relative chronological information they reveal. Seventy one ‘flowsets’ comprising glacial lineations, and 19 ribbed moraine flowsets are identified based on the spatial properties of these landforms, yielding information on palaeo-ice flow geometry. Flowset cross-cutting is prevalent and reveals a highly complex flow geometry; major ice divide migrations are interpreted with commensurate changes in the flow configuration of the ice sheet. Landform superimposition is the key to deciphering the chronology of such changes, and documenting superimposition relationships yields a relative ‘age-stack’ of all Irish flowsets. We use and develop existing templates for interpreting the glaciodynamic context of each flowset – its palaeo-glaciology. Landform patterns consistent with interior ice sheet flow, ice stream flow, and with time-transgressive bedform generation behind a retreating margin, under a thinning ice sheet, and under migrating palaeo-flowlines are each identified. Fast ice flow is found to have evacuated ice from central and northern Ireland into Donegal Bay, and across County Clare towards the south-west. Ice-marginal landform assemblages form a coherent system across southern Ireland marking stages of ice sheet retreat. Time-transgressive, ‘smudged’ landform imprints are particularly abundant; in several ice sheet sectors ice flow geometry was rapidly varying at timescales close to the timescale of bedform generation. The methods and approach we document herein could be useful for interpreting other ice sheet histories. The flowsets and their palaeo-glaciological significance that we derive for Ireland provide a regional framework and context for interpreting results from local scale fieldwork, provide major flow events for testing numerical ice sheet models, and underpin a data-driven reconstruction of the Irish Ice Sheet that we present in an accompanying paper – Part 2. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Extensive glacial lakes dammed in the Scandinavian Mountains during the retreat of the last Scandinavian Ice Sheet were first hypothesised over a century ago. Here, using high-resolution LiDAR, we report >4500 relict shorelines, deltas and palaeo-channels related to ice-dammed lakes over a ∼30 000 km2 area of central Jämtland, west-central Sweden. Shorelines occur as flights on the valley sides, a consequence of sequential lowering of palaeo-lake levels during ice margin retreat and lower threshold outlets becoming ice-free. Based on the extent and elevation of shorelines, we identify requisite lake-damming ice-margin positions and lake drainage outlets, and we reconstruct the coupled evolution of ice-dammed lakes and the retreating ice margin. Beginning as a series of smaller ice-dammed lakes along the Swedish-Norwegian border, draining westward across the present-day water divide and into the Atlantic Ocean, the lakes successively coalesced during eastward ice margin retreat to form water bodies covering 1000s of km2 with 10s of km-long calving margins. Ultimately, the lake system coalesced into a single lake: the Central Jämtland Ice Lake, which exceeded 3500 km2 in area and 360 km3 in volume. Eventually, the damming ice-margin split in two, resulting in a large (∼200 km2) catastrophic glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) that reversed the drainage of the entire lake system from the west to an eastern outlet draining to the Baltic basin. We present new radiocarbon ages for one lake drainage event prior to the eastward outburst flood and, together with previously published deglacial ages and local varve records, we suggest that the region was possibly deglaciated within just 350 years, sometime between 10.5 and 9.2 cal ka BP. We tentatively correlate the penultimate drainage of the Central Jämtland Ice Lake to the zero-varve of the Swedish Time Scale, a drainage varve at Döviken, eastern Jämtland, raising the tantalising prospect of using the evolution of the ice-dammed lake system to tie the varve-based Swedish Time Scale to the radiocarbon timescale with a new programme of radiocarbon dating in central Jämtland. • Vast ice-dammed lakes formed during the last deglaciation of Jämtland, Sweden. • The ice-dammed lakes were an intricate part of the deglacial dynamics. • We document several catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). • We tentatively correlate one GLOF to the zero-varve of the Swedish Time Scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]