Stratigraphy and glaciotectonic structures of permafrost deformed beneath the northwest margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands, Canada.

The upper 5^20mof ice-rich permafrost at three sites overridden by the northwest margin of the Laurentide ice sheet in the Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands, western Arctic Canada, comprise massive ice beneath ice-rich diamicton or sandy silt. The diamicton and silt contain (1) truncated ice blocks up to 15m long, (2) sand lenses and layers, (3) ice veins dipping at 20^30b!, (4) ice lenses adjacent and parallel to sedimentary contacts, and (5) ice wedges. The massive ice is interpreted as intrasedimental or buried basal glacier ice, and the diamicton and silt as glacitectonite that has never thawed. Deformation of frozen ground was mainly ductile in character. Deformation was accompanied by sub-marginal erosion of permafrost, which formed an angular unconformity along the top of the massive ice and supplied ice clasts and sand bodies to the overlying glacitectonite. After deformation and erosion ceased, postglacial segregated ice and icewedge ice develope within the deformed permafrost.