A Review of Lichenometric Dating of Glacial Moraines in Alaska

In Alaska, lichenometry continues to be an important technique for dating late Holocene moraines. Research completed during the 1970s through the early 1990s developed lichen dating curves for five regions in the Arctic and subarctic mountain ranges beyond altitudinal and latitudinal treelines. Although these dating curves are still in use across Alaska, little progress has been made in the past decade in updating or extending them or in developing new curves. Comparison of results from recent moraine-dating studies based on these five lichen dating curves with tree-ring based glacier histories from southern Alaska shows generally good agreement, albeit with greater scatter in the lichen-based ages. Cosmogenic surface-exposure dating of Holocene moraines has the potential to test some of the assumptions of the lichenometric technique and to facilitate the development of a new set of improved lichen dating curves for Alaska.