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These conditions are considered unusual, [6] restricting it to a process of importance within a few centimeters of a rock's surface and on larger existing water-filled joints in a process called ice wedging. Not all volumetric expansion is caused by the pressure of the freezing water; it can be caused by stresses in water that remains unfrozen.
Frost weathering is the collective name for those forms of physical weathering that are caused by the formation of ice within rock outcrops. It was long believed that the most important of these is frost wedging, which is the widening of cracks or joints in rocks resulting from the expansion of porewater when it freezes. A growing body of ...
Mass wasting is a general term for any process of erosion that is driven by gravity and in which the transported soil and rock is not entrained in a moving medium, such as water, wind, or ice. [2] The presence of water usually aids mass wasting, but the water is not abundant enough to be regarded as a transporting medium.
Plucking is increased where there are preexisting fractures in a rock bed. As the glacier slides down a mountain, energy from friction, pressure or geothermal heat causes glacial meltwater to infiltrate the spaces between rocks. [4] This process, known as frost wedging, puts stress on
Exfoliating slabs of granite, on Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, USA. Exfoliating granite is a granite undergoing exfoliation, or onion skin weathering (desquamation).The external delaminated layers of granite are gradually produced by the cyclic variations of temperature at the surface of the rock in a process also called spalling.
Ice lens formation resulting in frost heave in cold climates. Frost heave is the process by which the freezing of water-saturated soil causes the deformation and upward thrust of the ground surface. [3] This process can distort and crack pavement, damage the foundations of buildings and displace soil in
Solifluction is a collective name for gradual processes in which a mass moves down a slope ("mass wasting") related to freeze-thaw activity. This is the standard modern meaning of solifluction, which differs from the original meaning given to it by Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1906. [1] [2]
[9] [10] In 1935, Melik discovered that frost weathering had been a very successful geomorphic process in non-glaciated regions of the Slovenian Alps throughout the Pleistocene. The word "periglacial" was not well-known at the time so he merely emphasized enhanced transit of scree down the slopes in relation to mass movement processes.