Several hundred thousand year old moraines preserved in the semi-arid environment of High Mountain Asia attest to Middle Pleistocene glaciations, but the regional correlation of glacial stages and the spatial extent of the glacial advances remain poorly constrained. We examined glacial landforms and Quaternary sediments in the Bartang valley, northwestern Pamir, a region with no previous quantitative glacial chronology. Using cosmogenic ¹⁰Be exposure ages, we dated glacially polished bedrock, moraines, and mass wasting deposits. Our data show that the northwestern Pamir was heavily glaciated in the Middle Pleistocene (≥220 ky) with large valley glaciers occupying some of the major valleys in the western Pamir. During the penultimate glacial cycle (191–130 ky) these valleys may have been largely ice free. Catastrophic mega debris flows with volumes ≥0.05 km³ occurred after the ice retreat and reflect paraglacial destabilization of glacial sediments. The age of the best-dated mega debris flow (81 ± 4 ky) is similar to moraine ages ∼70–80 ky documented throughout the Pamir, demonstrating that remobilized sediments may provide valuable age constraints on glacial histories. In order to facilitate regional comparison of glacial chronologies, we developed a Gaussian separation algorithm, which determines a moraine age from a distribution of boulder exposure ages based on the assumption that post-depositional processes prevail over inheritance, and that the oldest boulder ages best represent the timing of moraine formation. We compiled moraine boulder exposure ages from the Pamir and adjacent regions and provide a summary of Middle and early Late Pleistocene glacial cycles of western High-Mountain Asia.

在亚洲高山半干旱环境中保存的数十万年的冰rain证实了中更新世的冰川，但是冰川阶段的区域相关性和冰川运动的空间范围仍然受到限制。我们检查了帕米尔西北部Bartang山谷的冰川地貌和第四纪沉积物，该地区以前没有定量的冰川年代学。使用宇宙成因¹⁰在暴露年龄之前，我们对冰川抛光的基岩，冰rain和大量浪费的沉积物进行了测年。我们的数据表明，帕米尔西北部的冰川在中更新世（≥220 ky）处于重度冰川期，而大的山谷冰川则占据了帕米尔西部的一些主要山谷。在倒数第二次冰川周期（191-130 ky）期间，这些山谷可能基本上没有冰。灾难性巨型泥石流，体积≥0.05km ³发生在冰撤退之后，并反映了冰川沉积物的冰川下失稳。最佳的大型泥石流的年龄（81±4 ky）与整个帕米尔地区记录的冰年龄约70-80 ky相似，这表明已迁移的沉积物可能会对冰川历史提供宝贵的年龄限制。为了促进冰川年代的区域比较，我们开发了一种高斯分离算法，该算法根据沉积后过程胜过继承，并且最古老的巨石年龄最能代表的假设，根据巨石暴露年龄的分布确定冰ora年龄。冰m形成的时间。我们汇总了帕米尔和邻近地区的冰ora巨石暴露年龄，并提供了亚洲高山区西部中更新世早期和晚更新世冰川周期的摘要。