Scientists have uncovered amazing traces left in the landscape left by landslides left over from millions of years ago by amazing details.
The so-called Using the method of reflection seismology, a team of scientists captured huge valleys excavated by glacial rivers at a depth of hundreds of meters beneath the North Sea seabed. These features are called “tunnel valleys” and can help us understand how a frozen landscape changes in response to global warming.
“For more than a century, the origin of these channels has been unclear. “This discovery will help us better understand the process of retreating the current glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica,” said James Kirkem, a geophysicist with the British Antarctic Research Program.
According to him, just as we leave footprints in the sand, glaciers also leave traces on the ground on which they crawl; The latest data point to important details of glacier retreat.
As the name suggests, reflection seismology is based on ground vibrations to determine the density profile at significant depths. About the same way that scientists use earthquakes to determine the density of our planet’s entrails; However, this method is aimed at a smaller scale.
In this case, a group of pneumatic weapons were applied to a section of the North Sea. As their sound waves propagated, hydrophones collected their reflections from structures of different densities under the seabed.
Scientists have since processed these high-resolution 3D data to create a map of ancient landscape layers.
This method can even detect 4-meter formations buried at a depth of 300 meters, which means that the data obtained show the most detailed tunnel valleys under the North Sea.
The data revealed 19 intersecting canals between 300 and 3,000 meters wide. Based on the morphology of these channels, scientists have determined that they are tunnel valleys formed by the molten year under the ancient ice cover.
Because of the high level of detail, these channels also provide information about how ice sheets interacted with them during their formation. Given that the existing ice sheets near the Earth’s poles are melting due to climate change, a better understanding of this process will help us determine what might happen to Greenland and Antarctica in the future.
“Although we knew there were huge glacier canals in the North Sea, we were able to capture the smallest detail of the relief in them for the first time,” said Kelly Hogan, a geophysicist with the British Antarctic Research Program.
According to him, these delicate formations tell us how the water moved in these icy channels, how the ice stopped and melted. It is very difficult to determine what is happening under the ice sheets today, especially how water and sediments affect the ice flow, which are the most important determinants of ice behavior.
Hogan notes that by using these ancient canals, we can understand how the ice will respond to changes in the environment in the wake of climate warming, which is extremely necessary and timely today.
According to the researchers, drilling technologies should definitely be used in future research in this direction in order to better understand the chronology of tunnel valleys.
Such details will allow us to create a better model of these ancient hydrological systems, which we will then adapt to the current situation.
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