Chapman Conference delves into the significance of rock glaciers

Rock glaciers are rubble‐covered, flowing mixtures of rock and ice common in many alpine and polar regions. They even may occur on Mars. Although rock glaciers are important agents of geomorphic modification of the landscapes in which they occur, they are less well studied than their “true” ice‐glacier cousins, and many questions surround their origin and development. The scientific benefits of answering these questions may be considerable, in part because rock glaciers could provide accessible archives of local climatic conditions throughout much of the last 10,000 years, and possibly extending back much longer in some settings. A Chapman Conference on the geomorphic and climatic significance of rock glaciers was sponsored by AGU at the Northwest College Field Station in the Absaroka Mountains near Cody, Wyo., August 23–28, 1996. Despite more than 40 years of study, surprisingly little is understood about rock glaciers. Even hypotheses about their genesis are controversial: one view holds that regardless of compartheir similar appearance and distribution, rock glaciers are distinct from true glaciers and strictly result from periglacial processes [Barsch, 1996]; the other holds that the formation of rock glaciers involves a continuum of processes from glacial to periglacial [Potter, 1972]. The conference was convened to help resolve the issue of the origin of rock glaciers, to highlight the significance of rock glaciers as geomorphic systems, and to identify areas for future research.