The Last Ice Age was responsible for much of the landscape, landforms and soils we live on. As the ice ground its way from the highlands to the sea, it carved great valleys (glens) and moulded the land surface. The sea was more than 100 m lower and the Earth's crust was depressed by the great load of ice weighing it down. When the ice melted, the sea returned and the Earth's crust rose again as the weight of the ice disappeared. The land surface then started its long recovery from the deep blanketing by ice, as vegetation slowly returned to the thawing landscape.
Prof. Paul Bishop is a geographer and has recently retired from the University of Glasgow. In this talk he explores the various lines of evidence around Kirkintilloch and nearby areas for the presence of this ancient massive ice sheet, and then shows how the landscape recovered from the deep freeze.
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| British ice coverage during the last ice age. (Reproduced with the permission of the British Geological Survey © NERC. All rights reserved.) |
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| Bardowie Loch - an example of a "kettle hole" created by glaciation. (© P. Bishop) |
