This grant supports a study of the margin of the East Antarctic ice sheet, a very sensitive area because its flow is disrupted by subglacial bedrock ridges. The resulting ice fields expose a stratigraphic section of the ice sheet including basal ice of great age which ablates to form supraglacial moraines. The objectives of this study include 1) mapping of the surface elevation and thickness of the ice in the Beardmore-Glacier area in order to document the effect of bedrock topography on local ice flow patterns: 2) identification of the Pleistocene- Holocene boundary in the exposed ice based on oxygen isotope compositions of systematically-collected ice samples; 3) study of selected clasts in supraglacial moraines of the area in order to obtain information about the geology of the East Antarctic craton; and 4) geochemical, mineralogical, and isotopic study of silicate spherules that occur in significant numbers in glacial sediment in the study area.
