THE LAST GLACIATION OF SHETLAND, NORTH ATLANTIC British Geological Survey © NERC Journal compilation © 2008 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 37 THE LAST GLACIATION OF SHETLAND, NORTH ATLANTIC BY

• Main Authors: N. R. Golledge, A. Finlayson, T. Bradwell, J. D. Everest
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Key words; glaciation; Shetland; glacial landsystems; Scotland; North Atlantic; Ice cap; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.536.4864; http://www.umsl.edu/~naumannj/professional geography articles/THE LAST GLACIATION OF SHETLAND, NORTH ATLANTIC.pdf

ABSTRACT. Evidence relating to the extent, dynam-ics, and relative chronology of the last glaciation of the Shetland Islands, North Atlantic, is presented here, in an attempt to better illuminate some of the controversies that still surround the glacial history of the archipelago. We appraise previous interpre-tations and compare these earlier results with new evidence gleaned from the interpretation of a high resolution digital terrain model and from field re-connaissance. By employing a landsystems ap-proach, we identify and describe three quite differ-ent assemblages of landscape features across the main islands of Mainland, Yell and Unst. Using the spatial interrelationship of these landsystems, an assessment of their constituent elements, and com-parisons with similar features in other glaciated en-vironments, we propose a simple model for the last glaciation of Shetland. During an early glacial phase, a coalescent British and Scandinavian ice sheet flowed approximately east to west across Shetland. The terrestrial land-forms created by this ice sheet in the north of Shet-land suggest that it had corridors of relatively fast-flowing ice that were partially directed by bed to-pography, and that subsequent deglaciation was in-terrupted by at least one major stillstand. Evidence in the south of Shetland indicates the growth of a lo-cal ice cap of restricted extent that fed numerous ra-dial outlet glaciers during, or after, ice-sheet degla-ciation. Whilst the absolute age of these three landsystems remains uncertain, these new geo-morphological and palaeoglaciological insights rec-oncile many of the ideas of earlier workers, and al-low wider speculation regarding the dynamics of the former British ice sheet.