Drumlins around Lago Viedma
Although the Patagonian Icefields aren’t generally associated with drumlins (Glasser et al., 2008), there are some around Lago Viedma in the South Patagonian Icefield. They have been described in detail (Ponce et al., 2013) but they show up beautifully in the Landsat map below. The mapping below is by me (Bethan Davies) and Glasser and Jansson (2008). Drumlins are probably rare in Patagonia as the temperate ice masses release large amounts of meltwater, which may destroy any bedforms.
Drumlins around the world
Drumlins have been observed at the beds of former palaeo ice-sheets across the world. They are found across the Pennines of Britain, in Anglesey, and in the Lake District (Livingstone et al., 2008; Hughes et al., 2010, 2014). In the photo below there is a drumlin on Anglesey. The farmer has helpfully put a stone wall along the long-axis of the drumlin.
The most ubiquitous subglacial landforms
Drumlins are therefore one of the most ubiquitous landforms formed underneath ice sheets (Clark et al., 2009). They are typically oval-shaped hills, with a long-axis parallel to ice flow. The up-ice (stoss) face is typically steeper than the down-ice (lee) face (Stokes et al., 2011). They are typically between 250 – 1000 m long, 120-300 m wide, and 1.7 to 4.1 times as long as they are wide (Clark et al., 2009). They also generally occur in clusters, or swarms, as can be seen in the images from around Lago Viedma above.
Drumlins in palaeo-ice sheet reconstruction
Glacial geologists frequently use these swarms of drumlins in palaeo-ice sheet reconstruction, because they can be directly related to the direction of former ice flow. They can therefore be used to reconstruct the dynamic behaviour of former ice sheets (Livingstone et al., 2010; Livingstone et al., 2012). Their length may be related to ice velocities, with a tendency to become more elongated under fast ice-flow conditions. At their longest, they grade into Mega-Scale Glacial Lineations, typically found under former ice-streams.
The mystery of how drumlins are made
Although drumlins have a typical morphology, they can be made up of lots of different kinds of internal sediments, ranging from mainly bedrock, to mainly till, to mainly sorted sediments (Stokes et al., 2011). A diagnostic process for their formation is therefore challenging to deduce.
One theory growing in popularity is the ‘instability theory’, which states that small perturbations in the bed of the ice sheet grow under a positive-feedback mechanism into the large landforms we see on land (e.g., in Britain and in Patagonia) today (Stokes et al., 2013). Such instabilities tend to grow exponentially, with a rate dependent on wavelength. Essentially, the process amplifies the relief at the ice-bed interface and results in the formation of bedforms like drumlins in recognisable patterns.