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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Bethan DaviesORCiD
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Glaciers are significant landscape modifying agents; they carve huge valleys, produce vast quantities of sediment through erosion, and transport it for hundreds of kilometres. Over the Earth’s history, glaciers and ice sheets have grown and shrunk repeatedly. At times, almost the entire Earth was covered by ice, and at other times, there was hardly any frozen ground at all. Today, there are large polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and smaller glaciers, icefields and ice caps at high latitudes and on mountain ranges across the globe. Glaciers are sensitive to climate change and are therefore indicators of changing temperature or precipitation. At present, global glacier and ice sheet recession is currently driving sealevel rise, reducing freshwater resources and changing hazard potential in mountain regions worldwide. In this chapter, we first discuss different types of ice mass, consider the relationships between glaciers and climate, review how glaciers gain and lose mass, and how glaciers transfer this mass from their upper to lower regions. Second, we address glaciers as powerful erosive agents that generate vast volumes of sediment. This sediment is transported towards the glacier margins and ultimately to large depocentres beyond the ice margin. Here, we consider characteristic lithofacies associated with different glaciogenic settings. Finally, this chapter introduces the fundamental concept of ‘Glacial Landsystems’. This theory rests on the idea that ice masses in different climates, topographic settings and terminal environments (e.g. terrestrial, lacustrine, marine) behave differently and have different impacts on the landscape and depositional record. This results in a characteristic suite of sedimentlandform assemblages that can be collated to identify key processes at the icebed interface, at the ice margin, and within and on top of the ice. We include examples of some, but by no means all, glacial landsystems, from a variety of different environments, and for each one discuss the key processes at play, the resultant lithofacies, and the diagnostic assemblages of sediments and landforms. This gives a glimpse into the astonishingly wide array of glacial landscapes that can be formed, and preserved, in different environments and climates across our globe.
Author(s): Davies BJ, Boston C, Le Heron DP
Editor(s): Levell B;
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Reading's Sedimentary Environments: Processes, Facies and Stratigraphy, 4th Edition
Year: 2026
Print publication date: 01/04/2026
Online publication date: 01/04/2026
Acceptance date: 01/04/2026
Edition: 4
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Place Published: Bognor Regis
URL: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/shop/general-introductory-earth-sciences/reading's-sedimentary-environments-processes-facies-and-stratigraphy-4th-edition-p-9781119739852#tableofcontents-section
Notes: 9781119739852 ebook ISBN.
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781119739838
