Beaded stream resulting from melting of ground ice

Location: Kaminak Lake area; 62E 21' N, 95E 15' W

This photo, taken from an altitude of about 500m, illustrates the effect of melting ground ice on a stream channel. Where massive ground ice (in the form of vertical ice wedges forming polygonal patterns) has melted, depressions form (see also, image 0115). Such melting probably results from pooling of water to depths that prevent winter ice from freezing to the channel bottom, forming roughly circular depressions. Those depressions are connected by normal stream channels, creating the beaded appearance. Other more tabular forms of ground ice, contained within till bodies, form a variation of beaded stream for which I have coined the term "Geillini Stream" (image 0118) after the river of the same name that enters Hudson Bay near the Manitoba/Nunavut borders (NTS55D) (also, see images 0114, 0116, and 0117).

Updated 04/07/2010 AW