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1. Introduction
When it is considered that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old it is obvious that the Irish landscape has undergone huge changes within that time. The geological processes which have operated on the Irish landscape over these billions of years are extremely varied and complex, hence the records of these processes that are left in the surface form of the landscape and their underlying rocks are extremely complicated and fragmentary and difficult to decipher.To understand the landscape in its current form we must realise that various large scale, global events have been more important than others, and though geological processes (e.g. the action of rivers and the sea, peat formation) are still operating today in Ireland these have only a minor effect on the overall landscape. The last mega-geological event to have affected the Irish landscape is the last ice age, or glaciation. This occurred between 73,000 and 10,000 years ago and had a huge effect on our landscape and geology, being the final shaping action over the majority of our countryside.
In these articles I will look at the effect this ice age had with respect to
- The causes of the Ice Age, processes of ice erosion and deposition, and ice flow indicators
- The landforms created during the ice age and the sediments that were deposited and
- The effects of glaciation on humans
