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Last-glacial-cycle glacier erosion potential in the Alps
- Source :
- Earth Surface Dynamics, Vol 9, Pp 923-935 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Copernicus Publications, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The glacial landscape of the Alps has fascinated generations of explorers, artists, mountaineers, and scientists with its diversity, including erosional features of all scales from high-mountain cirques to steep glacial valleys and large overdeepened basins. Using previous glacier modelling results and empirical inferences of bedrock erosion under modern glaciers, we compute a distribution of potential glacier erosion in the Alps over the last glacial cycle from 120 000 years ago to the present. Despite large uncertainties pertaining to the climate history of the Alps and unconstrained glacier erosion processes, the resulting modelled patterns of glacier erosion include persistent features. The cumulative imprint of the last glacial cycle shows a very strong localization of erosion potential with local maxima at the mouths of major Alpine valleys and some other upstream sections where glaciers are modelled to have flowed with the highest velocity. The potential erosion rates vary significantly through the glacial cycle but show paradoxically little relation to the total glacier volume. Phases of glacier advance and maximum extension see a localization of rapid potential erosion rates at low elevation, while glacier erosion at higher elevation is modelled to date from phases of less extensive glaciation. The modelled erosion rates peak during deglaciation phases, when frontal retreat results in steeper glacier surface slopes, implying that climatic conditions that result in rapid glacier erosion might be quite transient and specific. Our results depict the Alpine glacier erosion landscape as a time-transgressive patchwork, with different parts of the range corresponding to different glaciation stages and time periods.
- Subjects :
- geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
Mountaineering
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Bedrock
Elevation
Glacier
QE500-639.5
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
Climate history
01 natural sciences
Dynamic and structural geology
Geophysics
Deglaciation
Erosion
Physical geography
Glacial period
Geology
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 21966311 and 2196632X
- Volume :
- 9
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Earth Surface Dynamics
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c3b2a8b46e19887f9f61836f121daeeb