June 9-11, 2017
Fieldtrip - Schedule and registration
Middle and Late Wisconsinan events and stratigraphy in southern Québec – A new pre-LGM marine incursion
Fieltrip leaders:
- Michel Parent (Geological Survey of Canada, Québec, QC)
- Hugo Dubé-Loubert (Ministère de l’Énergie et des Ressources naturelles, Val d’Or, QC)
Collaborators:
- Pierre J.H. Richard, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC
- Guillaume Légaré-Couture, INRS- Centre Eau, Terre, Environnement, Québec, QC
- J.P. Guilbault, Museum of Paleontology and Evolution, Montréal, QC
The 80th Annual Reunion of the Friends of the Pleistocene will be head-quartered at Mont St-Hilaire(Gault Nature Reserve, McGill University) in southern Québec, Canada. The meeting is co-sponsored by the Geological Survey of Canada and the Ministère de l’Énergieet des Ressourcesnaturelles du Québec. Information on the Gault facilities can be obtained through the following links.
Saturday will consist of a full day fieldtrip and Sunday, a half-day fieldtrip. We have reserved accommodation for 42 persons at the Gault House, chalet and gîte on Friday and Saturday nights. Please register early to ensure your stay at the Gault Nature Reserve facilities and to help us in the planning process. We’ll finalize arrangements based on the number of registrants
on June 1st.
Accommodation and meals:
The Gault Nature Reserve has three (3) facilities offering individual beds for 42 persons:
- Gault House, which houses the main meeting rooms and has 7 rooms that can accommodate up to twenty (20) participants. Four (4) of the rooms can accommodate 2 persons each. The three (3) other rooms can accommodate respectively three (3), four (4) and five (5) persons. If you wish to share a room with someone in particular (a spouse for instance), please let us know at the time of registration and we’ll give you preference for rooms with 2-beds.
- Chalet #1, which is a 5 minute walk from Gault House and has 4 bedrooms that can sleep four (4) persons each in superposed beds.
- Gîte, which is next to the Gault House on the shore of LacHertel and has 2 bedrooms that can sleep three (3) persons each in single and superposed bed.
An academic breakfast will be served Saturday and Sunday morning. Saturday evening’s banquet will include a choice of menus and will be served at the Gault House. Lunches, drinks and snacks will be provided during the fieldtrip. Buses will be equipped with WiFi and washroom.
Registration:
Lodging, meals and bus transportation are included in the cost of registration, which is CAN$ 325.00per person. Participants to the meeting may arrive on site beginning at 15:00 Friday,and they should definitely arrive before 18:30 so that we may convenefor pre-meeting instructions and distribute bedroom keys.
Payment of the registration fee should be made through PayPal in Canadian currency to Hugo Dubé-Loubert (). Payment may be made either from the sender’s checking account or charged to their specified credit card. The sender will need to have a PayPal account (which is free), and it is very important that the payment be sent as a “gift” (NOT for “goods and services”, which would require you to lose a small service fee). PayPal will automatically handle currency conversion.
If you need more information or have difficulty paying the registration fee via PayPal, contact Hugo directly ()
If you have special needs for food or lodging, please send us a separate email so that we may take appropriate measures.
Day 1: Friday, June 9th
18:30 - Participants convene for an ice-breaker at the Gault House (Gault Nature Reserve, McGill University). Instructions to participants and distribution of guidebooks. If needed, final sleeping arrangements or adjustments.
Day 2; Saturday, June 10th (by bus)
Site 1 – Mont St-Hilaire slope. Typicalfossilshell assemblages in Champlain Sea littoral deposits.
Site 2 – La Présentation. Post Champlain Seaalluvial sandsheet. Sablière Luc Beauregard
Site 3 – St-Jude .Lake Lampsilisrhythmites. Landslide of May 10th 2010, 4 casualties
Site 4 –Bridge over Yamaska River.Presentation and discussion of sonic drillholes RS-4 et RS-2
Site 5 – St-Nazaired’Acton – SE-trending striae on SW-trending rochesmoutonnées.
Site 6 – St-Dominique – Readvance till overlying esker and subaqueous outwash sediments.
18:00 –Gault House -Conference by Dr. Pierre J.H. Richard on the stratigraphic and paleoecologic record of Lac Hertel, a key site for the regional deglacial history.
19:00 - Annual banquet of the NE Friends of the Pleistocene
Day 3 (half day): Sunday, June 11th (by bus)
Site 7 – St-Césaire–Readvance till overlying esker and subaqueous outwash. Lake Candonavarves.Champlain Sea fossil assemblages.
(Site 8 – Optional - West Brome - Lake Candona delta at 210 mASL).
Site 9- Abercorn – Lake Vermont rhythmites
12:00 End of fieldtrip.
Fieldtrip description-
This fieldtrip includes visits to a variety of sites that will provide participants with an opportunity to discuss current concepts and issues on Late Quaternary stratigraphy and events in the St. Lawrence valley and in the adjacent Appalachian piedmont. At the time of the previous FOP meeting in this region, the early radiocarbon age (> 12500 BP) of the Champlain Sea incursion and associated deglacial events, most notably the ice-flow reversal in the Appalachians and the development of a calving bay in the St. Lawrence Valley, were controversial issues. Now that the existence of a large proglacial lake preceding the Champlain Sea (Glacial Lake Candona) has been reinstated in the southern St. Lawrence Lowlands (Parent and Occhietti, 1988; Rodrigues, 1992) and that late glacial ice-flow re-orientations have been ascribed to the development of ice-streams (Parent and Occhietti, 1999; Ross et al., 2006), new uncertainties in the regional Late Quaternary record have emerged as a result of new findings from fieldwork and drilling conducted in the context of regional hydrogeologic surveys (Dubé-Loubert, Parent and Brazeau, 2013; Parent et al., 2014).
These new findings include:
- Multiple sites showing the presence of a post-LGM ‘readvance till’ overlying glaciofluvial and/or glaciolacustrine sediments. While the age of this readvance is stratigraphically constrained (during the Lake Candona episode), its outer boundary remains to be established.
- Pre-LGM fossiliferous marine sediments, overlying alluvial sands AMS-radiocarbon-dated at 31 270 ± 200 years BP and 33 250 ± 240 years BP. The fossil content and age of these sediments indicate that a relatively long Middle Wisconsinan interstadial event, characterized by normal drainage conditions and followed by a relatively short-lived marine incursion, preceded the Late Wisconsinan glacial advance across the region.
Figure 1.Representative cross-section of Quaternary units between the Richelieu River and the Appalachian Piedmont.Notice the vertical exaggeration of 85 X of this 40 km-long section. The buried subaquatic outwash/esker ridge complex was first identified by the 3C seismic survey (shear wave profile shown below the cross-section) and then confirmed by a rotosonic cored borehole (RS-02). Note that although marine limit (about 175 m ASL) lies well above the level of both the lowlands and the piedmont, Champlain Sea clays are much thinner on the piedmont.
U.S. citizens, be sure your passport is current and bring it on the trip!