7. Landforms from the restless conveyor belt

Abstract

Glacial geomorphologists combine two geomorphological approaches—process studies, including empirical field measurement and laboratory experiments, and form analogy, or reconstructive geomorphology—in an attempt to make sense of the vast array of glacial depositional landforms created by the leaky, restless, and constantly shuffling conveyor belt or ‘dirt machine’ that is the glacier. ‘Landforms from the restless conveyor belt’ describes the range of glacigenic features that are spatially defined ‘sediment–landform associations’, and which are categorized by a process-form-based framework. These include subglacial footprints, ice-marginal moraines, supraglacial associations, glacifluvial assemblages, and subaqueous assemblages.