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10 - Paraglacial coasts
- Edited by R. W. G. Carter, University of Ulster, C. D. Woodroffe, University of Wollongong, New South Wales
- Foreword by Orson van de Plassche
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- Book:
- Coastal Evolution
- Published online:
- 06 July 2010
- Print publication:
- 05 January 1995, pp 373-424
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- Chapter
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Summary
The initial shoreline, like that of the present, must have been largely dominated by drumlin outlines … a picture the sheer beauty of which will live long in the observer's memory.
Douglas Johnson, 1925, The New England – Acadian Shoreline, pp. 118–19Introduction
Marine transgression across glaciated terrain can produce striking coastal landscapes. Drumlin archipelagos such as Boston Harbour (in the northeastern USA), Mahone Bay (in southeastern Canada), or Clew Bay (in the west of Ireland) are among the most impressive such landscapes, Boston Harbour and Mahone Bay providing the inspiration for Douglas Johnson's words of reverie. Still more spectacular in many cases are the flooded glacial valleys forming fjords (Fig. 10.1), common along the margins of coastal highlands throughout the Northern and Southern Hemisphere fjord belts (Fig. 10.2). While underscoring our central assertion, that glaciation may exert a profound influence on the later evolution of a coastline, fjords and drumlin archipelagos are but two examples of the wide range of paraglacial phenomena encountered on mid- to high-latitude coasts.
Large areas of the globe have been glaciated repeatedly during late Cenozoic time and intermittently on earlier occasions in the geological record (Harland & Herod, 1975 Fulton, 1989). Major continental ice sheets have experienced cyclic growth and decay during the last two million years or more, while the record of glaciation along the Gulf of Alaska continental margin goes back to the late Miocene (Eyles, Eyles & Lagoe, 1991).