Periglacial patterned ground on the Styggedalsbreen glacier foreland, Jotunheimen, southern Norway: Micro-topographic, paraglacial and geoecological controls

Several types of periglacial patterned ground have developed rapidly in the frost-susceptible sediments of degraded 'annual' moraines deposited between c. AD 1930 and 1973 on the glacier foreland of Styggedalsbreen, western Jotunheimen, Norway. Detailed mapping of patterned ground phenomena provides the basis for a micro-scale, landscape-ecological (geoecological) approach to the distribution, formation and stabilization of patterned ground. Sorted nets, sorted stripes, surface cracks, solifluction lobes, boulder-cored frost boils, ploughing boulders, and surficial colluvial sand and gravel deposits occupy distinct micro-topographic site types influenced by slope, exposure, drainage conditions and vegetation. Moisture availability appears to be the most important physical environmental control on both the distribution of the patterned ground and present levels of activity. Patterned ground formation and stabilization on glacier forelands are seen as partly exogenous and paraglacial, rather than entirely endogenous and developmental. Vegetation development can be a cause or an effect in the formation of particular types of patterned ground which, even in relatively simple glacier-foreland landscapes, may involve complex geoecological interactions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd