The Development, History and Future of Cryospheric Geomorphology

The cryosphere is a broadly defined term associated with areas where water is in solid form. Thus, cryospheric geomorphology, in theory, should include polar and mountain regions, the arctic, ice, sea ice, glaciers, rock glaciers, snow, permafrost, ice shelves and icebergs, karst-glacial interactions, and even planetary cryosphere. No book can completely justify including all these areas/topics. In this treatise on geomorphology, the focus is primarily on conventional and applied glacial geomorphology and periglacial geomorphology with a rich history and promising future. Glacial geomorphology, for example, rose to prominence in debate surrounding the theory of Ice Ages. Detailed descriptions and novel measurements of processes and landforms and now high-end computing facilities led to sophisticated process-form modeling. Current emphases include interactions between glacial and other processes in development of mountain belts, natural hazards, hydrological interplay, and responses to climate change. Periglacial geomorphology begins with Walery von Lozinski and the IGS Spitzbergen excursion, 1910–11, followed by it becoming a descriptive branch of European-dominated climatic geomorphology with a growing emphasis on quantitative studies by the 1960s. More recently, the emergence of geocryology, cold-regions engineering, and sophisticated Quaternary studies is dominating many aspects of basic and applied periglacial geomorphology. The advent of high-resolution satellite and drone images, digital elevation models, and machine learning and large-scale data computational techniques are now leading the discovery process for cryospheric geomorphology.