How much do we know about Stonehenge? Less than we think. And what has Stonehenge got to do with the Ice Age? More than we might think. This blog is mostly devoted to the problems of where the Stonehenge bluestones came from, and how they got from their source areas to the monument. Now and then I will muse on related Stonehenge topics which have an Ice Age dimension...
THE BOOK
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
To order, click HERE
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
To order, click HERE
Saturday, 7 November 2015
Pro-glacial lakes - Russell Glacier, W Greenland
These amazing photos of pro-glacial ice-dammed lakes are from the Russell Glacier, West Greenland. I don't think they are 2 photos of the same lake, but the photos were taken several years apart, so it's possible.
In the top photo the edge of the glacier is blocking off a possible meltwater escape route at the tip of a spur, and a very large lake has been partly drained. The original shoreline is easily visible; because it's so fresh there is a stark contrast between the vegetated area on top of the spur and the barren area (with many bedrock outcrops) on the lower slopes. If you look carefully at the slope beyond the area of floating brash ice, you can see a whole series of other faint shoreline traces, formed at short-lived water level stillstands during a protracted period of lake draining. (These are the sorts of things David Sigden and I looked for very intensively during our fieldwork in Greenland and Antarcica -- but this time theu were associated with sea-level stillstands over a long period of isostatic recovery.....)
The bottom photo is even more spectacular, showing the old lake shoreline even more clearly, and showing the exposed lake bed as well. Probably this photo was taken in the same year that the lake was drained. On the lake floor, meltwater streams have already started to incise themselves into the old lake floor sediments.
According to the descriptions in the literature, the only way that these lakes can drain is by the thinning and "lifting" of the glacier ice off its bedrock floor, allowing meltwater torrents to escape via rather complex conduit networks on or near the glacier bed. These processes are, of course, very difficult to observe......
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