Geoheritage Festival Talk on Zoom – Tom Bradwell on Glaciation & Sea-level change in NW Scotland

Glaciation and sea-level change in NW Scotland: established views, new results and future work.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, around 24,000-28,000 years ago, the British-Irish Ice Sheet covered approximately 850,000 km 2 – around half the size of the present-day Greenland Ice Sheet – and contained enough ice to raise global sea levels by around 2.5 m when it melted. This talk will present new geological, geomorphological and chronological evidence from onshore and offshore NW Scotland, collected as part of the Britice-Chrono project. This evidence has been used to construct the most detailed picture so far of how ice-sheet deglaciation progressed and the impacts it had on the landscape and sea level in NW Scotland. The talk will summarise recent published work, present some unpublished findings and will conclude with an update on current research in the NW Highlands Geopark.  

Dr Tom Bradwell is a Lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Stirling, specializing in Quaternary geology and landscape change. Before this he was a survey geologist and senior scientist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. His main research focuses on using geomorphological mapping, sedimentological analysis and dating techniques to reconstruct former ice sheets and understand their response to external drivers. Much of Tom’s fieldwork over the last 20 years has been in NW Scotland and in UK offshore waters, but he has also been on 18 field campaigns to Iceland. Tom has authored / co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and was awarded the Lewis Penny Medal by the UK Quaternary Research Association in 2009. His hobbies include cycling (MTB), cricket (discussing), football (watching) and ice skating (…badly).

Register for Tom Bradwell’s talk on 2nd March