Contributions to the Glacial Geology of Spitsbergen

Abstract

On June 17th, 1896, the tercentenary of the discovery of Spitsbergen by Barentz, we first sighted the western coast of the great island, the unknown interior of which Sir Martin Conway's expedition had been organized to explore. The sea was strewn with floes, which barred direct approach to the shore, and the incidents of the passage through the ice helped us to realize that we were 13° north of the Arctic Circle, far within the area which, according to a once popular theory, was formerly buried beneath a massive cap of ice. But the first near view of the land was calculated to destroy whatever faith we might have had in the former existence of a north polar ice-cap. For the sharp, serrated ridges of Mount Starashchin (see Pl. XIX, fig. 2) and Dodman Den, which guard the entrance to Ice Fiord, indicate that Western Spitsbergen has not at any recent time been wholly submerged beneath an ice-cap. Confluent series of glaciers occur in Spitsbergen at the present day, and form the so-called ‘inland ice-sheets.’ One such can be seen to the north of Ice Fiord, rising gradually from the shore to the sky-line; while on the plateau south of the fiord are smaller, disconnected glaciers. Hence, during the passage up Ice Fiord, between the great ice-sheet to the north and the scattered glaciers to the south, through the ice-floes among which the steamer carefully threaded its way, and past the huge piles of ice heaped along the shore, we

The Debris Content of Surging Glaciers in Svalbard and Iceland

“…The tec tonically deformed , banded ice is essentially similar to that identified at Magarovbreen as regelation ice by Boulton ( 197o[b] ). Thrust fea tures and folds in basal ice were also observed by Garwood and Gregory ( 1898) at Elfenbeinbreen, Dronbreen and Plogbreen , glaciers that were undergoing rapid advances (now classified as surges) at the time of their visit in 1896.…”

“…There are many reports of h eavily crevassed , rapidly advancing glaciers in Svalbard (Garwood and Gregory, 1898;Lamplugh, 1911 ;Pillewizer, 1939;Glen , 1941 ); so much so that Li est01 ( 1969) concluded "surges are frequent phenomena in Spitsbergen ; in fact they constitute a common form of glacier advance". In 19 70, aerial monitoring of glacier movements showed that 12 glaciers were surging, at least one of which was a dvancing farth er than at any other time during the Neoglacial period (Liest01, 1971 ).…”

On the Origin and Transport of Englacial Debris in Svalbard Glaciers

“…3b) . In an advancing g lacier , such a sequence is exposed in th e steep terminus (Garwood and Gregory, 1898 ;cf. Lliboutry, 1964-65, pI.…”

Glacial Geomorphology at Glasgow

“…More prescient was Gregory's early collaborative work on modern glacier margins in Svalbard before he came to Glasgow. British contributions to knowledge on contemporary glacier margins were sparse, but Garwood and Gregory (1898), in explaining the process of debris entrainment and deposition and proglacial thrusting by an advancing sub-polar glacier, provided probably the earliest description of what is now known as the apron entrainment process (cf. Evans, 1989).…”