Abstract
The Quaternary geology of western Norway’s landscape is the result of glacial and post-glacial sedimentation and erosional processes, a significant sea-level drop and high rock-slope failure activity. All these processes are represented within a small valley section below the Mannen rock-slope instability in Romsdal valley, western Norway. Here, exposure ages, Quaternary geological mapping and geophysical investigations permit the development of a paraglacial landscape evolution model. The model contextualises at least six catastrophic rock-slope failure events within the overall sequence of fjord-valley infilling following deglaciation. A transition from a wide basin-like valley into a strongly confined valley section led to the build-up of more than 40 m thick stratified drift, which was at least partly deposited within a marine environment. The morphology of these sediments features two distinct erosional levels, which are interpreted to be connected to tidal currents during post-glacial sea-level drop. The landform evolution model illustrates the importance of catastrophic rock-slope failures and the impact of strong tidal currents on the typical sediment fill in narrow, high-relief fjord valleys.
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Acknowledgements
This study is part of the project ‘CryoWALL - Permafrost slopes in Norway’ (243784/CLE) funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN).
We thank our project partners and co-authors from Hilger et al. (2018) Benjamin Jacobs, Michael Krautblatter and John C. Gosse for their cooperation and support. Sample processing for 10Be dating was conducted by the first author at Cosmic Ray Isotope Sciences at Dalhousie University (CRISDal) with great help of John C. Gosse and G. Yang.
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Hilger, P., Hermanns, R.L., Etzelmüller, B. (2021). A Landform Evolution Model for the Mannen Area in Romsdal Valley, Norway. In: Vilímek, V., Wang, F., Strom, A., Sassa, K., Bobrowsky, P.T., Takara, K. (eds) Understanding and Reducing Landslide Disaster Risk. WLF 2020. ICL Contribution to Landslide Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60319-9_34
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