No abstract

Along the northern part of the western coast of Sweden, the landscape is characterized by joint-aligned valleys with intervening rock hills. Precambrian bedrock is exposed over large areas and the Quaternary cover is mainly restricted to the bottom of narrow valleys. The well-exposed bedrock exhibits many glacial forms, but recently the major landforms have been interpreted as exhumed sub-Mesozoic etch forms. To gain insight into the relative roles of different processes in shaping the present forms, we studied a granite area where the rock hills contain fractures and narrow clefts with weathering forms and saprolite remnants. Marks of glacial erosion are found only in the upper parts of the clefts, where erosion by subglacial meltwater has exploited weathered preglacial sheeting structures to form furrows with concave cross profiles (p forms). On the summit surfaces, glacial erosion has been of greater importance, but the roche moutonnees found here are also structurally controlled. The main impact of glacial erosion is plucking on the order of tens of metres. Thus, landscapes labelled “areally scoured glacial terrain” can, at some locations, also be described as stripped and slightly incised etch surfaces.

The main landforms within the glacially scoured Precambrian rocks of the Swedish west coast are closely connected to the principal structural pattern and have lately been explained as mainly a result of etch processes, probably during the Mesozoic and with a possible second period of etching during the Neogene. To explore the effect of multiple glacial erosion on the rock surfaces, an island with two different lithologies and with striae from different directions was selected for a detailed study, focusing on the shape of roches moutonnées. Air-photo interpretation of bedrock lineaments and roches moutonnées combined with detailed field mapping and striae measurements are used to interpret the structural and lithological control on the resulting shape. The study reveals a significant difference in shape between roches moutonnées in augen-granite and orthogneiss. Low elongated and streamlined roches moutonnées occur in the gneiss area, striated by a Late Weichselian ice flow from the NE. This ice flow is subparallel with both the local dominant trend of topographically well-expressed joints and the schistosity of the gneiss. Frequently, there are no signs of quarrying on the lee-sides of the gneiss roches moutonnées and hence they resemble the shape of whalebacks, or ruwares, as typically associated with the exposed basal weathering surface found in tropical areas. The granite roches moutonnées were formed by an older ice flow from the ESE, which closely followed the etched WNW-ESE joint system of the granite. Late Weichselian ice flow from the NE caused only minor changes of the landforms. On the contrary, marks of the early ESE ice flow are poorly preserved in the gneiss area, where it probably never had any large effect as the flow was perpendicular to both schistosity and structures and, accordingly, also to the pre-glacial relief. The study demonstrates that coincidence between ice flow direction and pre-glacially etched structures is most likely to determine the effects of glacial erosion.

Periglacial landforms on Spitsbergen (Svalbard, Norway) are morphologically similar to landforms on Mars that are probably related to the past and/or present existence of ice at or near the surface. Many of these landforms, such as gullies, debris-flow fans, polygonal terrain, fractured mounds and rock-glacier-like features, are observed in close spatial proximity in mid-latitude craters on Mars. On Svalbard, analogous landforms occur in strikingly similar proximity, which makes them useful study cases to infer the spatial and chronological evolution of Martian cold-climate surface processes. The analysis of the morphological inventory of analogous landforms on Svalbard and Mars allows the processes operating on Mars to be constrained. Different qualitative scenarios of landscape evolution on Mars help to better understand the action of periglacial processes on Mars in the recent past.

2005: Saprolite remnants as indicators of pre-glacial landform genesis in southeast Sweden. Geogr. Ann., 87 A (3): 447-460.ABSTRACT. Twenty-six sites with remnants of gravelly saprolites (grus) have been located in southeast Sweden. Joint block hills (castle kopjes) and steep rock walls with weathered joints as well as rounded boulders are documented to have an origin in deep weathering and subsequent stripping of saprolites. The saprolite remnants and landforms result from the fragmentation of the re-exposed sub-Cambrian peneplain along fracture systems. Only shallow saprolites occur on the elevated intact parts of the sub-Cambrian peneplain, while saprolites up to 20 m thick are encountered in areas where the sub-Cambrian peneplain is fractured and dissected. Neogene uplift with reactivation of the weathering system is thought to be the main cause of saprolite formation. Deep weathering is thus judged to have been the major agent of landform formation in the study area, while glacial and glaciofluvial erosion has contributed mainly by stripping saprolites, detaching corestones, and plucking joint blocks along weathered joints.