Reconstruction of the Bulgobac Glacial System,Pieman River Basin,Western Tasmania

During the Early Pleistocene Bulgobac Glaciation, a piedmont glacial system extended into the valleys west of the West Coast Range of Tasmania. The ice that fed this extensive system originated mainly to the south and east on the western Central Highlands and northern Tyndall Mountains. The palaeo-equilibrium line lay to the east of the West Coast Range. Reconstruction of the palaeoglacial system indicates that ice-surface gradients reached only ~10–15 m km^-1 over much of the system to the west of the equilibrium line, although the ice fronts were steep and rapidly ablating. The nature of the piedmont glacier is consistent with the build up of ice behind the topographic barrier of the West Coast Range. This would have resulted in ice thickening, maintained and perhaps accentuated by high precipitation as well as by the location of the equilibrium line well to the west of the western Central Highlands.