Other Periglacial Landforms Ice Wedges & Ice-Wedge Polygons

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Other periglacial landforms Ice wedges & ice-wedge polygons when thermal tension exceeds the strength of surface materials, frost cracking occurs & fractures penetrate into the active layer and the upper portion of the permafrost – start only mm wide but go down several meters water melts in active zone in spring, flows into crack, freezes in permafrost & grows with time to form ice wedge or, in dry permafrost, sand wedge ice wedges connect in polygonal pattern with diameters of meters to > 100 m; have some with ridges at boundary, others with troughs active ice wedges are limited to continuous permafrost; when they melt, surrounding sediment collapses into space, & creates ice-wedge cast 454 lecture 11 Patterned ground in northern Alaska 454 lecture 11 White Mountains, AZ 454 lecture 11 Hummocky terrain in northern Alaska 454 lecture 11 Greenland 454 lecture 11 Pingos large, ice-cored, dome-like features best developed in continuous permafrost few meters to > 100 m high & up to 1200 m basal diameter oval or circular in plan form in fields closed-system pingos develop in level, poorly-drained shallow lake basins – draining of lake allows permafrost table to rise to level of former lake floor – water trapped in saturated soil is displaced upward by cryostatic pressure (pressure from ice formation) until it freezes & becomes the core of the pingo open-system pingos develop on slopes where free water under artesian pressure is injected into the site of the pingo – as water approaches the surface, it freezes – more common in discontinuous permafrost pingos grow at 5 cm to > 1 m/yr 454 lecture 11 270 m pingos in the delta of the Mackenzie River, Canada 454 lecture 11 pingo on the coastal plain near Kotzebue, Alaska 454 lecture 11.

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Chapter 7 Seasonal Snow Cover, Ice and Permafrost
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