Using bed-roughness signatures to characterise glacial landform assemblages beneath palaeo-ice sheets

Palaeo-glacial landforms can give insights into bed roughness that currently cannot be captured underneath contemporary-ice streams. A few studies have measured bed roughness of palaeo-ice streams but the bed roughness of specific landform assemblages has not been assessed. If glacial landform assem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Glaciology
Main Authors: Francesca A. M. Falcini, Maarten Krabbendam, Katherine A. Selby, David M. Rippin
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2022
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2021.122
https://doaj.org/article/0767e099e34c4af58b3a26c885f4d0de
Description
Summary:Palaeo-glacial landforms can give insights into bed roughness that currently cannot be captured underneath contemporary-ice streams. A few studies have measured bed roughness of palaeo-ice streams but the bed roughness of specific landform assemblages has not been assessed. If glacial landform assemblages have a characteristic bed-roughness signature, this could potentially be used to constrain where certain landform assemblages exist underneath contemporary-ice sheets. To test this, bed roughness was calculated along 5 m × 5 m resolution transects (NEXTMap DTM, 5 m resolution), which were placed over glacial landform assemblages (e.g. drumlins) in the UK. We find that a combination of total roughness and anisotropy of roughness can be used to define characteristic roughness signatures of glacial landform assemblages. The results show that different window sizes are required to determine the characteristic roughness for a wide range of landform types and to produce bed-roughness signatures of these. Mega scale glacial lineations on average have the lowest bed-roughness values and are the most anisotropic landform assemblage.