Glacial Geology

The new Second Edition of Glacial Geology provides a modern, comprehensive summary of glacial geology and geomorphology. It is has been thoroughly revised and updated from the original First Edition. This book will appeal to all students interested in the landforms and sediments that make up glacial landscapes. The aim of the book is to outline glacial landforms and sediments and to provide the reader with the tools required to interpret glacial landscapes. It describes how glaciers work and how the processes of glacial erosion and deposition which operate within them are recorded in the glacial landscape. The Second Edition is presented in the same clear and concise format as the First Edition, providing detailed explanations that are not cluttered with unnecessary detail. Additions include a new chapter on Glaciations around the Globe, demonstrating the range of glacial environments present on Earth today and a new chapter on Palaeoglaciology, explaining how glacial landforms and sediments are used in ice-sheet reconstructions. Like the original book, text boxes are used throughout to explain key concepts and to introduce students to case study material from the glacial literature. Newly updated sections on Further Reading are also included at the end of each chapter to point the reader towards key references. The book is illustrated throughout with colour photographs and illustrations.

We live in the Quaternary Ice Age, the last million years when large ice sheets covered much of North America and Eurasia, with successive glaciations lasting about 90,000 years interspersed with interglaciations lasting about 10,000 years, such as our preset Holocene interglaciation. Quaternary glaciations were discovered and mapped by glacial geologists from evidence for glacial erosion and deposition on a large scale. Glaciology began as a descriptive branch of geology and has become a quantitative branch of physics. Glaciology and glacial geology are two sides of the same coin. Glaciologists study ice dynamics to model present and past ice sheets. Glacial geologists study the evidence produced by ice dynamics, evidence that controls the models. This book is written for glacial geologists that have a modest exposure to mathematics so they can understand the fundamental link between glaciology and glacial geology. This link is the height of an ice sheet above its bed. Ice height depends primarily on the strength of ice-bed coupling. The stronger the coupling, the higher the ice, and therefore the larger the ice sheet. Glacial geology allows an assessment of ice-bed coupling. Coupling weakens under the interior of an ice sheet when a frozen bed thaws and thereby allows ice to slide over the bed to produce glacial geology by erosion and deposition processes. Coupling weakens much more near ice-sheet margins where ice moves as fast currents called ice streams, under which ice-bed coupling vanishes where basal water drowns bedrock bumps or soaks basal sediments. The book consists of seven chapters. Chapter One shows how glacial geology can be used to quantify the strength of ice-bed coupling. Chapter Two quantifies how coupling is weakened when a frozen bed thaws for slow sheet flow in the interior of an ice sheet, thereby lowering the ice surface. Chapter Three quantifies how the surface is lowered much more toward the margin of an ice sheet where basal water partly downs the bed along linear topography (river valleys, coastal straits, etc.), allowing for slow sheet flow to become fast stream flow. Chapter Four quantifies the ability of large partly confined floating ice shelves to reduce the discharge from fast ice streams entering the sea. Chapter Five discusses glacial geology produced by Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during a cycle of Quaternary glaciation, with a white hole needed to initiate an ice sheet, marine ice transgression needed to grow it, and marine ice instability needed to terminate it; these are all linked to glacial geology. Chapter Six shows how the Arctic ice sheet can be reconstructed during a cycle of Quaternary glaciation using glacial geology. Chapter Seven shows how glacial geology can be mapped under the Antarctic ice sheet as it exists today, with an emphasis on ongoing gravitational collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, grounded mostly below sea level in the Western Hemisphere.

Glacial Geology: Ice Sheets and Landforms provides a modern, comprehensive summary of glacial geology. It is presented in a clear and concise format, which is not cluttered with unnecessary detail. During the Late Cenozoic period much of the northern hemisphere was extensively glaciated. This had a profound effect on the nature of the landscape. In order to understand this landscape one must be able to identify and interpret the glacial landforms and sediments from which it is composed. These landforms and sediments tell a unique part of the story of the Cenozoic Ice Age. This book is about these landforms and sediments and provides the reader with the tools with which to interpret them. It shows how glaciers work and how the processes of glacial erosion and deposition which operate within them are recorded in the glacial landscape.

An introduction for courses that involve some knowledge of glacial geology and sediments of formerly glaciated terrains. The early chapters describe depositional processes at modern glacier and ice-sheet margins relating sediments and landforms in recurring "landsystems". Later chapters portray the distribution of these landsystems in Pleistocene glaciated terrains of the mid-latitudes, focussing on commonly encountered problems in various fields from stratigraphic and sedimentological investigations to construction problems relating to roads and dams. The resulting text is a summation of a large body of literature previously accessible only to specialists. A substantial reference list is complemented by cross-references throughout.

"This volume contains new materials which include stratigraphy, sea floor stratigraphy and isotopic geochemistry including radiometric dating. The work retains the conjunction of two entities: systematic treatment of "glacial geology" involving process and strategraphic, environmental and historical discussion of the Quaternary."