Conference and Workshop Climate Impacts on Glaciers and Biosphere in Fuego-Patagonia

The Patagonian Icefields are among the highest latitude and most sensitive icefields in the Southern Hemisphere, and are responding sensitively to climate. Their response to rapid climate changes during the Last Termination and during Holocene palaeoclimatic fluctuations has the potential to elucidate changes in large scale atmospheric circulation as well as aid better predictions of their future response to climate change. The application of numerous forms of dating techniques to glacigenic deposits in Patagonia, including cosmogenic nuclide dating, optically stimulated luminescence dating, radiocarbon dating, potassium/argon dating, combined with updated detailed geomorphological mapping, means that we now have a comprehensive dataset that constrains icefield fluctuations over the last 30,000 years. However, variations in calibration curves, corrections, and calculation methods mean that comparing different published datasets is challenging. According to published data, the timing of the last glacial maximum, and rates of recession, varies latitudinally across the icefields. However, this hypothesis is challenging to test without compiling all published ages and applying a uniform method of calculating and recalibrating ages. The aim of this review is therefore to present a state-of-the art compilation of published glacial geomorphology and chronostratigraphy in order to generate a new, updated reconstruction of the Patagonian Ice Sheet at the Last Glacial Maximum. We apply Bayesian Modelling to best determine the age of the mapped moraines. Isochrones of ice extent at 5 ka time slices will then be generated across the ice sheet. Using these isochrones, we will be able to generate palaeo ice-sheet reconstructions from 30 ka until the present day. Climate Impacts on Glaciers and Biosphere in Fuego-Patagonia Glacial Geology Oral Presentations 2 Glacial isostatic adjustment of the Southern Patagonian Ice-Fields as a natural experiment for sounding the underlying lithosphere structure V. Klemann, M. Motagh, M. Bagge 1-German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, Potsdam Germany