"Crevasse-Fill" Ridges: A Landform Type Characteristic of Surging Glaciers?

Submarine landform assemblages and sedimentary processes related to glacier surging in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

“…In Svalbard, similar ridges have been interpreted as either annual push moraines, created in front of tidewater glaciers by pushing during small winter readvances, or as crevasse-squeeze ridges [29,63,66,71]. As glaciers are believed to be especially crevassed when in the active phase of a surge cycle, the crevasse-squeeze ridges have been suggested to be the only landform definitively indicative of surge activity [63,71]. Following the recommendation of Lundqvist [55], we interpret the small ridges in Kongsfjorden as De Geer moraines.…”

“…Landforms related to glacier surges in submarine settings have been described from several Spitsbergen fjords [3,10,29,63,66,67]. The landform models suggested thus far include overridden recessional moraines, (mega-scale) glacial lineations, terminal moraines with associated sediment lobes on their distal slopes, eskers, annual push moraines and crevasse-squeeze ridges, the latter suggested to be the only feature diagnostic of a glacier surge [66,71]. The high detail preserved in submarine environments offers invaluable insights into the processes controlling landform genesis, and, together with lithological records from sediment cores, enables a better understanding of tidewater glacier sedimentation and dynamics (e.g.…”

“…[16,34,60,68,71]). They generally occur independently of climate and are triggered internally through, for example, changes in glacier hydrology or basal thermal regime [44,60,68,72].…”

“…[10,20,22,25,63,66,71,73]). Landforms related to glacier surges in submarine settings have been described from several Spitsbergen fjords [3,10,29,63,66,67].…”

Satujökull glacial landsystem, Iceland

“…Sharp, 1985a;Evans and Rea, 1999;2003;Schomacker et al, 2007). Landsystem 2a documents the oldest surge, which reached the proximal slopes of the ice-cored moraine arc of Landsystem 1 in the western foreland but not the forelands of the central and eastern lobes.…”