Middle Holocene Unconformity in Seneca Lake, NY

The post-glacial history of the Finger Lakes, NY have involved several changes in lake levels throughout the latest Pleistocene and Holocene, resulting from the changing position of the retreating Laurentide ice sheet, river outlet position, glacial rebound, and water balance. Previous studies of high-resolution seismic reflection profiles from three Finger Lakes define a middle Holocene erosional surface at water depths as great as 26 m in the northern end of each of lake. There are two proposed hypotheses to explain the origin of the observed erosional surfaces: 1) subaerial erosion during a lake lowstand and 2) erosion resulting from increased internal seiche activity. To evaluate these hypotheses, we examined a series of 2 to 5 m long piston cores collected along a north-south transect from one of the Finger Lakes, Seneca Lake. Cores were correlated using distinctive changes in the profiles of grain size, loss-on-ignition, and magnetic susceptibility. We recognize a significant erosional unconformity of early to middle Holocene sediment at modern depths <60 m because portions of the normal deepwater sediment sequence were missing in cores and were commonly replaced by a thin zone of sand and abraded shells (bivalves, gastropods). At water depths >60 m, the unconformity continues as a conformable zone. We attribute the unconformity to wave abrasion and nearshore current winnowing of the shoreface during a lowstand. With an assumption of an effective 20 m wave base, the depth to the low level lake surface responsible for the unconformity is estimated to be 40 m. The age of the unconformity is ~6 ka, based on radiocarbon ages of lithologic boundaries in the sediment cores. Because the unconformity grades into a conformable zone in deepwater cores that display no change in lithology, we hypothesize that the large-scale lake level drop is likely not the result of climate change, but rather a change in accommodation space in the northern portion of the lake basin due to glacial rebound.