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Towermadness 2 ancient lake5/18/2023 ![]() Gravity measurements showed that the material in the basin is less dense than the surrounding hard, metamorphic rocks - evidence that it is composed of sediments washed in from the sides. This revealed the outlines of the smooth, low-lying basin, nestled among higher-elevation rocks. Ice-penetrating radar provided a basic topographic map of the earth' s surface underlying the ice. The researchers assembled a detailed picture of the lake basin and its surroundings by analyzing radar, gravity and magnetic data gathered by NASA. "If we could get at those sediments, they could tell us when the ice was present or absent," he said. In any case, Paxman says, the substantial depth of the sediments in the basin suggest that they must have built up during ice-free times over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. This particular area could have been repeatedly covered and uncovered, Paxman said, leaving a wide range of possibilities for the lake's history. A 2016 study led by Lamont-Doherty geochemist Joerg Schaefer has suggested that most of the Greenland ice may have melted for one or more extended periods some time in the last million years or so, but the details of that are sketchy. Researchers say it is likely that ice has periodically advanced and retreated over much of Greenland for the last 10 million years, and maybe going back as far as 30 million years. Paxman says there is no way to tell how old the lake bed is. There is no evidence that the Greenland basin contains liquid water today. ![]() This is the first time anyone has spotted a fossil lake bed, apparently formed when there was no ice, and then later covered over and frozen in place. In recent years, scientists have found existing subglacial lakes in both Greenland and Antarctica, containing liquid water sandwiched in the ice, or between bedrock and ice. The researchers calculate that the water depth in the onetime lake ranged from about 50 meters to 250 meters (a maximum of about 800 feet). The image also show at least one apparent outlet stream to the south. The geophysical images show a network of at least 18 apparent onetime stream beds carved into the adjoining bedrock in a sloping escarpment to the north that must have fed the lake. Sediments in the basin, shaped vaguely like a meat cleaver, appear to range as much as 1.2 kilometers (three quarters of a mile) thick. states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. ![]() ![]() The team says the basin once hosted a lake covering about 7,100 square kilometers (2,700 square miles), about the size of the U.S. Most of the data came from aircraft flying at low altitude over the ice sheet as part of NASA's Operation IceBridge. The researchers mapped out the lake bed by analyzing data from airborne geophysical instruments that can read signals that penetrate the ice and provide images of the geologic structures below. It's important if we want to understand how it will behave in future decades." The ice sheet, which has been melting at an accelerating pace in recent years, contains enough water to raise global sea levels by about 24 feet. "We're working to try and understand how the Greenland ice sheet has behaved in the past. "This could be an important repository of information, in a landscape that right now is totally concealed and inaccessible," said Guy Paxman, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the report.
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