Geomorphologic, marine geological, and paleoclimatic evidence, along with modeling results, indicate that, during the Late Pleistocene, the Sea of Okhotsk was glaciated by a "back-arc" marine ice-sheet, which was a continuous spillover of glaciation from the highlands of Northeast Siberia, buttressed by a submarine ridge of the Kurile Island Arc. That marine ice sheet also impounded and deflected the Lower Amur and Uda Rivers which resulted in reorganization of their drainage systems. The Okhotsk marine ice sheet was grounded on seafloor and reached to the outer southern edge of the submarine Academy Sill. From that limit, the ice sheet extended farther south, across the deep Kurile Basin, as a floating ice shelf. The Okhotsk Sea and Beringian Ice Sheets were the only "back-arc" Quaternary glaciers; they were two major sources of icebergs, meltwater, and ice-rafted debris supplied to the North Pacific Ocean during the Ice Ages.
marine ice sheet, Sea of Okhotsk, Last Glacial Maximum, Kuril Islands, last deglaciation, climate change, Ice sheet buttressing, Iceberg armadas.
1. Anderson, Antarctic Marine Geology, 1999.
2. Antipov, Bull. Mosk. Ob-va Ispytatelei Prirody, v. 12, no. 2, 1997.
3. Baranov, Arctic and Russian Studies II, v. Report 671, 1997.
4. Bezrukov, Geological Investigations in the Far-Eastern Seas, 1960.
5. Bintanja, Quaternary International, v. 95/96, 2002.
6. Biryukov, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol., v. 68, 1988.
7. Bondarenko, Zemlevedeniye, v. 22, no. 3--4, 1931.
8. Braitseva, Quaternary Stratigraphy and Glaciations in Kamchatka, 1968.
9. Brigham-Grette, Quat. Res., v. 59, 2003.
10. Budd, Annals of Glaciology, v. 27, 1998.
11. Conolly, Geol. Soc. Am. Mem., v. 126, 1970.
12. Duplessy, Paleoceanography, v. 3, 1988.
13. Elias, Nature, v. 382, 1996.
14. Evteev, Geological Activity of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, 1964.
15. Flint, Glacial and Quaternary geology, 1971.
16. Glushkova, Quat. Sci. Rev., v. 20, no. 1--3, 2001.
17. Gorbarenko, Dokl. Akad. Nauk, v. 388, no. 5, 2003.
18. Greve, Annals of Glaciology, v. 28, 1999.
19. Grosswald, Quaternary International, v. 45/46, 1998.
20. Grosswald, Palaeohydrology and Environmental Change, edited by G. Benito, V. R. Baker, and K. J. Gregory, 1998.
21. Grosswald, Vergletscherungen in Japanischen Gebirgen und Ihr Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des Biwa-Sees, edited by Shoji Horie, 2002.
22. Grosswald, Polar Geography and Geology, v. 8, no. 2, 1984.
23. Grosswald, J. Glaciol., v. 41, no. 138, 1995.
24. Grosswald, International Project on Paleolimnology and Late Cenozoic Climate IPPCCE Newsletter, v. 11, 1998.
25. Grosswald, Quat. Sci. Rev., v. 21, 2002.
26. Grosswald, Quat. Res., v. 62, 2004.
27. Grosswald, Polar Geography and Geology, v. 8, no. 2, 1984.
28. Hattestrand, Ribbed moraines and Fennoscandian palaeoglaciology, 1997.
29. Holtedahl, Mar. Geol., v. 8, no. 2, 1970.
30. Hughes, J. Glaciol., v. 38, no. 128, 1992.
31. Hughes, Proceedings of the International Conf. on Arctic Margins, edited by K. V. Simakov, 1995.
32. Hughes, Ice Sheets, 1998.
33. Hughes, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol., v. 110, 1994.
34. Hughes, Pleistocene Beringia: An outright land bridge or a glacial valve constraining Asian migration to North America?, 1991.
35. Kaplin, The Fjord Coasts of the Soviet Union, 1962.
36. Keigwin, Nature, v. 377, no. 6549, 1995.
37. Keigwin, Global Fluxes of Carbon and Its Related Substances in the Coastal Sea-Ocean-Atmosphere System, edited by S. Tsunogai et al., 1995.
38. Koreisha, Glaciation of the Verkhoyansk-Kolyman Region, 1991.
39. Kotilainen, Nature, v. 377, no. 65471, 1995.
40. Kuz'mina, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR, v. 310, no. 6, 1990.
41. Lebedev, Geomorfologiya, v. 26, no. 1, 1995.
42. Mclntyre, CLIMAP Project Members, 1981, Seasonal Reconstructions of the Earth's Surface at the-Last Glacial Maximum, 1981.
43. Nakada, Tectonophysics, v. 212, 1992.
44. Nikolskaya, Southern Part of Far Eastern Russia, 1969.
45. Oba, Paleoceanography, v. 6, no. 4, 1991.
46. Okada, Pebbles and carbonate nodules from Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 56 cores, 1980.
47. Polyak, Mar. Geol., v. 143, 1997.
48. Raymond, The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Behavior and Environment, edited by B. Alley, R. Bindschadler, Antarctic Research Series, vol. 11, 2001.
49. Rea, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol., v. 49, no. 3/4, 1985.
50. Roberts, Eos Trans. AGU, v. 74, no. 36, 1993.
51. Savostin, Geology and plate tectonics of the Okhotsk Sea, Geodynamics of the Western Pacific-Indonesian Region, 1983.
52. Sedov, Materialy Glyatsiol. Issled., v. 82, 1997.
53. Sedov, Materialy Glyatsiol. Issled., v. 89, 2000.
54. Shepard, Submarine Geology, 2nd ed., 1973.
55. Shiga, Mar. Micropaleontol., v. 38, 2000.
56. Solheim, Global Planet. Change, v. 12, no. 1--4, 1996.
57. Udintsev, Geological Investigations in the Far-Eastern Seas, 1957.
58. Udintsev, Structure of the Okhotsk Sea Floor, 1981.
59. Vaughan, Polarforschung, v. 64, no. 2, 1994.
60. Velichko, Dynamics of the Terrestrial Landscape Components and Inner Marine Basins of Northern Eurasia During the Last 130,000 Years Atlas-Monograph, 2002.
61. Verbitsky, J. Geophys. Res., v. 97, no. D5, 1992.
62. Vlasov, Quaternary glaciations of the Northern Kuril Islands, Geografichesky Sbornik, 1958.
63. Volnev, Geomorfologiya, v. 14, no. 3, 1983.
64. Wong, Characteristics of and factors controlling sedimentation on the Sakhalin Shelf and in the Derugin Basin, Sea of Okhotsk, 2000.
65. Wong, Mar. Geol., v. 201, 2003.
66. Worall, Tectonophysics, v. 15, no. 4, 1996.
67. Zonenshain, Plate Tectonics of the USSR, 2, 1990.
