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Glacial Landscapes in the UK

The last ice age in the UK, and glacial processes

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1 section C

Overview

How far ice covered Britain in the last ice age and when it retreated, glacial and interglacial periods, freeze-thaw weathering, abrasion and plucking, rotational slip and bulldozing, and why glaciers deposit till and outwash.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Which parts of Britain lay beneath ice when the last ice age was at its coldest?

Numbers

Roughly when was ice at its greatest extent over Britain, and when did it finally retreat?

Key term

What is the difference between a glacial period and an interglacial period?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Which parts of Britain lay beneath ice when the last ice age was at its coldest?

    Model answer

    The whole of Scotland and Northern Ireland, most of Wales and northern England were buried, with the ice reaching south to roughly a line running from South Wales across the northern Midlands to the north Norfolk coast.

  2. 2

    What was the land like in southern Britain, beyond the edge of the ice?

    Model answer

    It was cold, treeless tundra with ground that stayed frozen for much of the year, shaped by freeze-thaw and by meltwater rather than by ice moving over it.

  3. 3

    Roughly when was ice at its greatest extent over Britain, and when did it finally retreat?

    Model answer

    The ice reached its greatest extent around 18,000 years ago and had melted back from Britain by about 10,000 years ago.

  4. 4

    What is the difference between a glacial period and an interglacial period?

    Model answer

    A glacial is a long, cold phase in which ice sheets grow and spread outwards, while an interglacial is a warmer phase between glacials when the ice melts back.

  5. 5

    Explain how freeze-thaw weathering breaks up rock in a cold upland.

    Model answer

    Water collects in a crack, freezes and expands by about 9%, pushing the crack wider, and repeated freezing and thawing eventually snaps off angular fragments of rock.

  6. 6

    What two conditions must be present for freeze-thaw weathering to work?

    Model answer

    Water able to get into cracks in the rock, and temperatures that repeatedly rise above and fall below 0 °C.

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