Are you a Geography A-Level student, teacher or undergraduate looking for some practise essay questions as part of your exam revision? Try these questions out.
Periglaciation
What are the main landforms you might expect to form in a periglacial environment?
Rock glacier on James Ross Island
Key idea: difference between Paraglacial (recovering from glaciation; e.g. the mountains of Scotland), Periglacial (in the region around a glacier, typically in a cold environment; e.g. in Greenland or Iceland) and Permafrost (cold environment where the ground is frozen for more than 2 years in a row).
Periglacial landscapes are developed in a permafrost region.
Patterned ground, stone stripes, solifluction and gelifluction, ventifacts, rock glaciers, protalus ramparts, blockfields.
Frozen ground facilitates processes of slope movement (solifluction)
High snow fall results in landforms such as rock glaciers and protalus ramparts.
What is an ice stream, and what landforms are associated with ice streaming?
Velocity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, using data from Rignot et al. 2011. Data set available from: Rignot, E., J. Mouginot, and B. Scheuchl. 2011. MEaSUREs InSAR-Based Antarctica Velocity Map, [list dates of data used]. Boulder, Colorado USA: NASA EOSDIS DAAC at NSIDC. http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0484.htmlKey idea: ice sheets are not static, but dynamic features that are drained by fast-flowing ice streams.
Ice streams flow very rapidly and are responsible for most of the discharge from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.