EFFECTS OF OLD GLACIERS

Press, Volume C, Issue 29539, 14 June 1961, Page 5

EFFECTS OF OLD GLACIERS

Work In Hurunui. Waiau Valleys Traces of three successive glacial advances in the Hurunui and Waiau river valleys have been recorded by Professor W. E. Powers, physical geography professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Aided by Dr. R. P. Suggate, of the Geological Survey of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Professor Powers traced the effects of the old glaciers from the outwash gravels of the lower floodplains, back through the terraces of the middle course, to the terminal moraines which mark the limit of each ice advance.

Professor Powers, a Fulbright Scholar, has been attached to the Geological Survey for the last five montlis. He has just returned from Brisbane, where he gave a paper on the geological history of Lake Michigan at the Congress of the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science He has done a great deal of work on the glacial and postglacial history of the North American Great Lakes, and particularly of Lake Michigan. on which Evanston lies. “The last glacial recession from the Lake Michigan area was about 11,000 years ago. which is more recent than is indicated for this part of New Zealand," said Professor Powers.

“I found nothing which would give me a definite date for the last recession of the ice up the Hurunui or Waiau, but by correlating the landform types there with those of other New Zealand valleys, it seems that the ice last disappeared from these valleys about 18,000 to 20,000 years ago." Dr. Suggate, he said, had dated deposits in other valleys from plant remains, but no suitable remains had yet been found in the Hurunui or Waiau valleys.