The drift of partially grounded icebergs leads to the formation of ploughmarks on the sedimentary seafloor of high-latitude continental shelves, bathymetric ridges and plateaux. Ploughmarks of various dimensions have been identified at several locations in the Arctic Ocean, suggesting that the icebergs produced during past glaciations were of different sizes and configurations (Jakobsson et al. 2014). According to Jakobsson et al. (2014), giant icebergs with drafts of more than 1000 m were present in the Arctic Ocean, most probably during the Saalian glaciation. Very deep iceberg ploughmarks have been mapped on Morris Jesup Rise at 1045 m water depth (Jakobsson et al. 2010) and offshore of central West Greenland at 1085 m depth (Kuijpers et al. 2007). The iceberg ploughmarks illustrated here from Hovgaard Ridge, Fram Strait (Fig. 1a), are the deepest features mapped to date, occurring to water depths of 1210 m (Arndt et al. 2014).
Multibeam swath bathymetry and sub-bottom profiler data illustrating iceberg ploughmarks on the Hovgaard Ridge. (a) Location of the study area (red box; map from IBCAO v. 3.0). (b) Swath-bathymetric image …
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