A talk by Adrian Hall on the mechanism of glacial erosion with new evidence obtained from the Loch Eriboll area.
Loch Eriboll is an amazing landscape fashioned by Ice Age glaciers. On Cranstackie, the ice was cold and slow-moving, and only weakly erosive, incapable of removing delicate summit tors. Along the valley floor, thick, warm and sliding ice removed many tens of metres of rock. The ancient Lewisian gneisses and the overlying Cambrian quartzites carry distinct sets of glacial markings and landforms that illustrate how rock properties influence erosion patterns. We find much evidence of glacial abrasion and plucking, the two processes of glacial erosion what we learned about at school. But there’s evidence at Eriboll for a very different and highly effective process mechanism – glacial ripping – driven by meltwater trapped under the glacier reaching very high pressure. Register below to find out more.
Adrian Hall is a geomorphologist based in Edinburgh. His research over the last 40 years has explored the wonderful diversity of landscapes and landforms found in Scotland, extending from below sea level to the mountain tops. At Stockholm University, he drew attention to some of the oldest landscapes on Earth found in Finland, to the geologically-recent erosion of the Baltic basin and to patterns of glacial erosion on old landsurfaces in Sweden,. He is currently part of a team working on the origins of the strandflat in Norway.
Register for the Zoom Talk on How Glacial Erosion Works
