Frost Creep and Gelifluction Features: A Review

Abstract

Frost creep and gelifluction are the cold-climate representatives of mass-wasting processes that occur in a broad range of environments. Neither process requires permafrost, and frost creep can be inhibited by its presence at shallow depth. Acting in various combinations, frost creep and gelifluction produce distinctive lobate and terrace-like landforms, which are easy to recognize while fresh and active, but difficult to distinguish from mudflow lobes, earthslides, and similar deposits after they have been modified by other processes. Large frost creep and gelifluction features are currently active in many tundra environments that experience only deep seasonal freezing; thus they are not generally considered to be indicators of permafrost. Most radio-carbon-dated lobes and terraces, however, seem to have originated at times when permafrost was more widespread than it is today. This is true in the Colorado Front Range, where the formation of lobes and terraces appears to have been initiated by rapid melting of ice-enriched permafrost during the warming phases of frost-heave cycles that were centuries or millennia in duration. There is growing evidence that lobes and terraces developed in many parts of the world between about 3000 and 2500 BP; the climatic significance of their formation during this interval is open to several interpretations. Long-term average rates of frontal advance, calculated for deposits in Colorado, Australia, Greenland, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Scotland, and Norway, range from 0.6 to 3.5 mm per calendar year, significantly slower than maximum rates of movement measured on the surfaces of active lobes and terraces in comparable environments; the features are clearly not as effective at transporting debris as was previously supposed. Variations in past rates of downslope soil movement, estimated from close-interval dating of buried humus horizons or plant remains overrun by the advancing fronts of lobes and terraces, provide a sensitive record of climatic change. The dated humus layers are also suitable for detailed pollen analyses and soil chronosequence studies.