Drainage of late Wisconsin glacial lakes and the morphology and late quaternary stratigraphy of the New Jersey-southern New England continental shelfand slope

We propose that late Wisconsin deposition and erosion (Hudson Shelf and Blo ck Island valleys) on the shelf and slope from New Jersey to southern New E ngland were a consequence of the catastrophic drainage of glacial lakes beh ind terminal moraine systems and the huge volume of water stored beneath th e Laurentian ice sheet and subsequent erosion of the lake sediments by flas h floods. The morphology imparted by glaciation regulated the discharge ass ociated with the ablation of the glaciers. Associated with the deposits wes t of Hudson Shelf Valley are the remains of mammoth and mastodon which were transported from their living habitats along the lake shores to their pres ent burial sites on the shelf. The floods also triggered gravity flows on t he upper continental slope which made possible the transportation of coarse debris over hundreds of km into the deep-sea. That these catastrophic hood morphologies can still be recognized on the middle to outer shelf suggest that much of its surface was little modified during the late Pleistocene/Ho locene transgression. Thus the late Pleistocene/Holocene transgression may have been characterized by short periods when sea level rose rapidly allowi ng for the preservation of relict features. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.