Glaciation Pack L Flashcards
What are 5 ways that humans use glaciated landscapes?
- Tourism
- Energy (HEP)
- Water for drinking and irrigation
- Mining
- Materials
What is an example of a direct and indirect change to a landscape?
Direct - skiing in mountainous areas
Indirect - burning fossil fuels which melts glaciers to due increased carbon dioxide causing climate change
What percentage of glaciers have been impacted by climate change?
75% of the world’s glaciers
Are impacts more local or widespread?
- Can be both
- Highly localised impacts could include a rockfall happening as a result of quarrying a moraine
- More regional impacts could include climate change
How does climate change cause more deposition?
- More meltwater
- More depositional landforms
Why do mining and quarrying take place in glaciated areas and how do they impact the landscape?
- Free-thaw weathering and erosion often exposes valuable rocks and minerals
- Once weight of glacier has gone, the bedrock dilates and more joints/fractures open in a process called pressure-release weathering
- Removing weathered rock becomes easier
- Dominates landscape but provides jobs
- Alters slope angles which can cause slope instability and rockfalls
What are two detailed examples of mining and quarrying?
Snowdonia, North Wales:
- Slate mining industry in glaciated uplands of Snowdonia
- Slate is used for roofing
- Vale of Llanberis contained Dinorwig Quarry which eventually closed in 1969
- Quarry was over 600m deep and over 1km long
- Lots of rockfalls in the 1950s and 1960s
- Large slate heaps remained after quarrying which changes the landscape
Wrexham:
- North of Wrexham there is an area that was quarried for sands and gravels
- It is an outwash plain from two ice sheets with large areas of deposits when the ice sheet melted
- Quarries are now disused but have left an unattractive landscape
Why is HEP produced in glaciated areas and how can it impact the landscape?
- Meltwater can be used directly to make HEP when it is diverted into tunnels from subglacial streams
- Climate change makes HEP from meltwater less predictable
- Ribbon lake in a glacial trough or tarn in a corrie is dammed to create a reservoir
- Water falls from a height to turn turbines to create power
- Norway and New Zealand get 90% of their power from HEP from meltwater off glaciers
- Switzerland has more than 500 power stations making HEP to create 70% of its power
- Butan and Nepal (more mountainous countries) have micro hydroelectricity from small dams
What is one detailed example of an HEP plant?
- Dinorwig power station in Snowdonia uses formerly glaciated landscapes to generate HEP
- Comprised of 16km of underground tunnels below Elidir mountain
- Marchlyn Mawr cirque contains a tarn at a higher elevaton and Llyn Peris ribbon lake at a lower elevation
- Water is held in the tarn which has a dam to raise storage capacity and energy is created as it flows downhill to the ribbon lake
- Supplies national grid at peak times within 10s of demand being registered
- Water pumped back to tarn using off-peak electricity in periods of low energy demand
- Humans have heightened the perimeter of the tarn and cirque lip and quarried backwall for slate
- Visual effects have been minimised by placing most of construction work underground
What landscapes and activities are tourists attracted to in glaciated areas?
- Climbing
- Mountaineering
- Hill walking
- Skiing
- Snowboarding
- Glacier walking
- Ice climbing
How many visitors go to the Alps each year and how many go to Hohe Tauern?
- Alps receives over 100 million tourists a year
- 1 millions tourists visit Hohe Tauern annually
How are tourists beneficial?
- 80% of jobs depend on tourism in the Alps
- Many alpine areas would not be economically viable without tourists
How does tourism directly and indirectly affect the landscape and water system?
- Ski piste preparation includes removal of vegetation and boulders and deforestation of mountainsides
- Increased avalanche risk due to increased snow accumulation
- Less interception and more water reaching soil/regolith means the propensity for mudslides have increased
- Landslides and rockfalls are more common
What are the options for managing glaciated landscapes when there is conflict over economic activities and protection of the environment?
Do nothing:
- Multiple economic uses take place and revenue is brought in
- Benefits companies and governments
Business as usual:
- Area stays as it currently is
- Hopes for self-regulation on environmental issues
Sustainable exploitation:
- Insistence on mandatory environmental regulations but activities can still take place
- Takes into account interests of many people but relies on compromise
Sustainable development:
- Using resources for current generation’s benefit but without damaging area for future generations
Comprehensive conservation:
- Protects and conserves glacial environments, especiallt when they are still in prisitine condition
- Only carefully regulated ecotourism or ecofarming is allowed
Total protection:
- No access to area so local people earn no revenue
- Scientific research and monitoring can take place
Where is Hohe Tauern?
- Austria
- 1 of 7 national parks
