The characteristics and significance of some lateglacial protalus ramparts in upland Britain

Arcuate and linear protalus ramparts of inferred Loch Lomond Stadial age are widespread in upland Britain outside the limits of contemporaneous glaciers. Survey and analysis of the morphology of nine ramparts suggests that these may have formed at the foot of slowly thickening snowbeds, with rockfall debris accumulating against their distal slopes, and that snowbed melting at the end of the stadial was uninterrupted by prolonged periods of stability or renewed growth. Rampart sediments consist of poorly-sorted assemblages of clasts with a variable infill of fines. Clast size and shape are strongly influenced by lithology, but rampart clasts are characteristically more angular and ‘slabbier’ than those of similar lithology in ice-marginal moraines. Ramparts may also be distinguished from moraines by their location, morphology, lack of a true matrix of fines and absence of erratics, and from talus-foot rock glaciers in terms of their width and the absence of flow structures. The mapped distribution of rampart altitudes across the Scottish Highlands displays a marked regional trend, with the lowest features in the west and south and highest in the Cairngorms. This pattern mirrors that of reconstructed firn line altitudes of Loch Lomond Stadial glaciers, and is inferred to reflect a pronounced eastwards and northwards decline in snowfall during the stadial.     

Glacial activity and paraglacial landsliding in the Devensian Lateglacial: evidence from Craig Cerrig-gleisiad and Fan Dringarth,Fforest Fawr (Brecon Beacons), South Wales

The tongue-shaped mass of debris and associated ridges on the cirque floor below Craig Cerrig-gleisiad, Brecon Beacons National Park is important and controversial because it has been attributed to more than one glacier advance during the Late Devensian. A new origin is proposed involving landslide development from the collapse of part of the western headwall followed by a single phase of glacier development in the Loch Lomond Stadial (Younger Dryas), which reworked the landslide sediments. Evidence for this landslide, which provides useful criteria for differentiating moraines formed by small glaciers from landslides, lies in tension cracks, backward-tilted blocks and bedrock joints dipping out of the western headwall, together with lateral levées, upstanding termini and angular clasts with only occasional, indistinct striae on the tongue-shaped mass, which is interpreted as a flowslide. Glacier reworking of debris in the upper part of the Cwm Cerrig-gleisiad landslide is indicated by subparallel ridges rising to 20 m above the cirque floor containing abraded clasts (16-32% striated). This interpretation is supported by a comparison with the morphological and sedimentary characteristics of a neighbouring landslide at Fan Dringarth, where no glacier developed in the Loch Lomond Stadial. The existence of paraglacial landsliding has significant palaeoenvironmental implications leading to: (1) erroneously large estimates of equilibrium line depression ($Δ$ELA) in the Loch Lomond Stadial; (2) consequent underestimates of summer palaeotemperatures and/or overestimates of the contribution of wind-drifted snow to glacier accumulation; and (3) larger moraines than usual and overestimation of the efficacy of glacial erosion because of antecedent processes.     

A note on the glacial and late glacial history of caithness

It is generally accepted that in the last glaciation Scottish ice from the Moray Firth flowed to the northwest across Caithness depositing shelly drift. Examination of striae along the east coast of Caithness shows that some were formed by ice flowing into and not out of the Moray Firth. It is argued that the flow into the Moray Firth may have occurred in the last glaciation and that the shelly drift may be a relic of an earlier glaciation. The cliffs of Caithness were formed during the Loch Lomond Readvance and have since been raised isostatically and so have been protected from further marine erosion by their own wave-cut platform which can be traced into Orkney where it intersects the present level.