Students are required to know the following details for the exam:
The range, variety and location of erosional landforms and their impact on human activity.
The range, variety and location of depositional landforms and their impact on human activity.
The range, variety and location of fluvio-glacial landforms and their impact on human activity.
The range, variety and location of periglacial landforms (to include patterned ground) and their impact on human activity.
Opportunities and challenges exist in upland areas (either glaciated in the past and/or currently active) for tourism, energy production, quarrying, transport, agriculture, settlement etc.
Ideally, this is developed in relation to one or more named locations: e.g Snowdonia, Lake District, Alaska (in respect of the periglacial features..) etc.
I set up a Power Point presentation which had each of the main headings already set up and provided a list of sites to visit, which could be copied and pasted into the slides. More slides could also be added. As with all Power Point work, the aim should be to keep the slides simple, and keep a uniform feel to each slide: not too many changes of font or messy effects. Not many people are impressed by words flying in letter by letter, or breaking glass, or strange slide transitions.
Here are some useful pointers for this section, and some recommended websites.
Try ALL ABOUT GLACIERS: good FAQ and images.
For a named example, there are some good links from the Scottish SCALLOWAY site.
Also try HERE. has links to several other places.
HUMAN USE OF GLACIATED AREAS
The tourist potential of these areas is obvious. The Cirque-arete-trough landscape attracts hill walkers, scramblers, climbers, mountaineers, photographers, botanists, skiiers, snowboarders, hang gliders, parascenders, painting, canoeing, sailing etc.
Winter tourism in the Cairngorms, around Aviemore is based on skiing. Recent opening of mountain top funicular railway to get tourists to the top of Cairn Gorm.
Some excellent locations like LAKE TEKAPO in New Zealand. There's a pictorial tour of the MER DE GLACE in the French Alps here, and some images of the FRANZ JOSEF glacier.
Fjordland in Norway is one of the most spectacular locations in the world, especially the Prekestolen, or Pulpit Rock - well worth the 2 hour walk to get to. Also Milford Sound in New Zealand, although the view of the Cuillin Hills from Elgol on Skye compares favourably.
Water is held in corrie lakes high above the main valley floor. This difference in height obviously provides the 'head' that is needed for HEP. Many valleys in Snowdonia and mid-Wales have large pipes leading up to a hidden location where water is then released to turn turbines.
Llyn Llydaw, on the slopes of Snowdon has a pipeline starting at the lip of the cirque, and drops to Nantgwynant HEP station, over 300m below. Dinorwic is one of the largest power stations and is a pump-storage scheme. Largest HEP station in Britain, uses 6 turbines, and produces 1,800 MW of electricity. Water from Marchlyn Bach corrie lake is sent down the pipes during the day and then pumped back at night. The turbines are enclosed inside the mountain.
Another mountain which has a similar system is Ben Cruachan, near Oban in Argyll. Visitors can see the power station: a mile long tunnel leads from Loch Awe to an HEP station 1200 feet beneath the mountains. The plant is designed to meet sudden fluctuations in demand, so that if there is a sudden surge, perhaps at the end of a popular TV show, water can be released from the loch to produce energy, and the water is then pumped back up to the loch during off-peak periods.
Water which is used for HEP is not wasted, it then carries on down the valley. If the valleys are dammed, and the shape of the glacial troughs makes this very straightforward, then the water can be collected and sent to cities in areas of the country where there is perhaps not as much rain as in the highland areas.
France, Switzerland and Norway have all well developed HEP schemes in upland areas. Hanging valleys, or dammed ribbon lakes. Paternoster lakes as well.
Several of lakes in Lake District e.g Haweswater, are in fact reservoirs.
Glaciers provide drinking water direct in some areas: rivers like the Rhine and Rhone are fed from glaciers. There is even a fear that they may dry up if global warming melts the Alpine glaciers. People in La Paz, Bolivia have water from nearby glacier as public supply.
People in the Rhone valley channel glacial meltwater to irrigate their crops.
Llyn Peris is a moraine dammed overdeepened ribbon lake, and provides water for Llanberis in N. Wales. Lake Vyrnwy in mid Wales occupies a glacial trough which was flooded in 1889 by building a dam across the valley.
Dilation, or dilatation is the effect of pressure release: when material is removed this often leads to joints expanding and cracks opening up, which makes the removal of blocks of stone easier.
In some valleys e.g Great Langdale in the Lake District, the truncating of the spurs has created steep crags, which exposes rock which can then be quarried.
Fluvioglacial sands and gravels are used by construction industry. Many eskers have had to be protected to stop the extraction of materials.
Agriculture is difficult in areas where the soil has been scraped clean by glacial abrasion. Drift may have been laid down in thick sheets. The climate is upland: cold and cloudy and high rainfall, which means that hill sheep farming is likely to be the main type of agriculture.
Go to the NFU site, for details of a hill sheep farm in the Lake District. This is often of marginal profitability and relies on grants for being in such an area.
Coniferous forests are often planted along the shaded N side of valleys, and are a valuable cash crop: the term for this is silviculture.
Valley floors are used for winter grazing: inbye land.
Lowland deposits of drift can be good farmland if drainage is improved with tile drains etc.
In some cases, the diffluence of glacial ice produces an easier route across a ridge, which is often exploited by railways in Highland areas of Scotland.
Has also produced several high passes, known often as Bealach: a Gaelic word. One of these crosses over to Applecross and is featured in a BBC Video that I use.
Bealach na Ba - 'pass of the cattle' or 'pass of the fools'
There are several depositional features which have been used as sites for settlements to raise them above the valley floor and reduce the flood risk in areas where drift has made the land surface poorly drained.
Glaciated areas tend to be sparsely populated: the settlement pattern is dispersed. Areas are ones which people want to live in.
In the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, villages are built on kames.