Five main deformation units, discrete sheets of deformed sediments that lie between a significant thickness of undeformed sediment, were selected for study within Late Pleistocene lacustrine sands and clays in the Onikobe and Nakayamadaira Basins, northeastern Japan. The deformed units show evidence of deformation by a variety of mechanisms including fluidization, liquefaction, brittle failure and cohesive flow. Driving forces are thought to be primarily reverse density gradient systems, but also include gravitational body force, shear stress and unequal loading. The main trigger mechanisms are firstly earthquakes, secondly overloading from volcanic sands and thirdly, to a lesser extent, subaqueous currents. Consideration is given to criteria that allow the trigger mechanism to be identified. This study shows that the following criteria can be used to identify a seismic triggering agent: (i) setting; (ii) the extent of the deformation units; (iii) absence of evidence relating to other potential trigger mechanisms; and (iv) evidence relating to other potential trigger mechanisms is present but can be seen elsewhere in the stratigraphic section associated with undeformed sediment. Conversely, the following criteria, while they are important in interpreting the driving force and deformation mechanism, have no relevance to the trigger mechanism: (i) sediment composition; (ii) deformation structures being restricted to a single stratigraphic interval (<1 m thick) (not necessarily correlatable over large areas); and (iii) similarity to structures in the literature.

Sediment production at a terrestrial section of the ice-sheet margin inWest Greenland is dominated by debris released through the basal ice layer. The debris flux through the basal ice at the margin is estimated to be 12^45 m 3 m^1a^1. This is three orders of magnitude higher than that previously reported for East Antarctica, an order of magnitude higher than sites reported from in Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, but an order of magnitude lower than values previously reported from tidewater glaciers in Alaska and other high-rate environments such as surging glaciers. At our site, only negligible amounts of debris are released through englacial, supraglacial or subglacial sediment transfer. Glaciofluvial sediment production is highly localized, and long sections of the ice-sheet margin receive no sediment from glaciofluvial sources. These findings differ from those of studies at more temperate glacial settings where glaciofluvial routes are dominant and basal ice contributes only a minor percentage of the debris released at the margin. These data on debris flux through the terrestrial margin of an outlet glacier contribute to our limited knowledge of debris production from the Greenland ice sheet.

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The ice-sheet margin at Russell Glacier, West Greenland, advanced 7 m a^1 between 1968 and 1999. As the ice advanced over moraine ridges, small changes in position caused major changes in the routing of proglacial water and sediment. These included changes in the distribution of ice-marginal lakes, in the periodic drainage of icedammed lakes, in the routing and sediment content of meltwater draining into the proglacial zone, and in the release of sediment from the moraines by erosion and mass movements. Proglacial hydrology and sediment flux appear to be controlled not simply by glacier mass balance, but by evolving ice-marginal geomorphology, which must be accounted for in palaeoenvironmental interpretation of proglacial sediments.