Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Glacial history
Philip D. Hughes
3.1 Introduction
Many of the Mediterranean mountains supported glaciers during the Pleistocene -
from Morocco in the west to the Lebanon in the east (Hughes
et al.
, 2006a; Hughes
and Woodward, 2009; Hughes, 2011) and some glaciers and ice patches still survive
today (Figure 3.1). In the Maritime Alps, north of the Cote d'Azur, Pleistocene ice
caps were contiguous with the main Alpine ice sheet, which covered a total area
of 126 000 km
2
during the last cold stage (Ehlers, 1996). In this chapter, only the
southernmost parts of the main Alpine chain that border the Mediterranean Sea are
considered. Ice caps also formed over the mountains of northwest Iberia (Vieira,
2007; Cowton
et al.
, 2009) and also over large areas of the western Balkans (Hughes
et al.
, 2011a). Glaciers even formed as far south as Crete during the Pleistocene
(Fabre and Maire, 1983). The consequences of these glaciations are clearly seen
in the Mediterranean mountains where glaciers have shaped the landscape to form
cirques, U-shaped valleys, aretes, roches moutonnees, glacial lakes and moraines.
Today there are still some glaciers in the Mediterranean mountains. Most of these
are restricted to the highest mountains such as the Pyrenees, the Maritime Alps and
the mountains of Turkey where the highest summits exceed 3000 m asl. However,
several glaciers also exist in lower mountain areas, such as central Italy (D'Orefice
et al.
, 2000) and in Montenegro and Albania (Hughes, 2007, 2009).
There is a long history of glacial research in the Mediterranean mountains. Jovan
Cvijic was one of the first geographers to note and map glacial landforms in Europe
and worked extensively in the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries (see, e.g., Cvijic, 1896, 1908, 1909, 1913). Albrecht Penck was another
early scholar who worked in the Mediterranean mountains. His research covered
a range of different areas including the Pyrenees (France/Spain) and the Dinaric
Alps (Balkans) (Penck, 1900). Hughes
et al.
(2006a) identified the first phase in
the development of the subject as the 'Pioneer Phase'. This phase is characterized
by initial observations of glacial features in the mountains and largely involves
descriptive accounts of features such as cirques, U-shaped valleys, moraines and
