Beyond The Ice Sheets:
New Records and Approaches To Beringia and the Unglaciated Fringes of North American Ice Sheets
Co-chairs: Duane Froese (U of A) duane.froese@ualberta.ca; and Grant Zazula (Yukon Heritage)
The extent and magnitude of past glaciations influences a perspective that only ‘ice' happened during cold stages of the Pleistocene. However, the unglaciated fringes, south of the ice sheet and within Beringia, preserve a tremendous record of environmental change and past climate, potentially spanning much of the Quaternary. This session focuses on new approaches to these records from the diverse archives preserved beyond the ice sheets, including loess and sedimentary records, paleobotanical, geomorphic, geocryological and ancient biomolecules. We encourage presentations using new dating techniques (tephrochronology, luminescence, cosmogenic nuclides) or new approaches to old problems of environmental dynamics in the unglaciated fringes.