Meltwater canyons in Nathorsts Land, East Greenland

 

I'm intrigued by some rather strange valleys on the northern flank of Nordvestfjord in East Greenland, in Nathorsts Land.  Two of then runn approx NE - SW, and the largest channel (the southernmost one) runs approx E -W.  The northern channel, just to the south of the puramidal peak called Trianglen,  has a prominent north-facing wall and is not very deep -- maybe 200m - 300m.  It is may be 2 km long.  The widdle channel is about 5 km long, and has a depth of c 700m.  And the southern channel, which has an elongated lake on its floor, is about 8 km long.

These channels all carry signs of intensive glacial erosion and aerial scouring -- and glacial diffluence has clearly operated at some time -- but the channels do not obviously connect a glacier catchment with a discharge route, and I therefore speculate that at certain times during the Quaternary, during phases of catastrophic glacier melting, they may have been cut and used by huge volumes of meltwater.

I haven't found any references to these channels in the literature, and I will need to do some more research............