Cryogenic Processes and Ice-Related Restructuring of the Regolith in Metamorphic and Igneous Terrains

Abstract

In the 1960s, in Nancy (eastern France), Alain Godard pioneered a programme on the experimental frost shattering of crystalline rocks. Following this, many geomorphologists from the Laboratoire de Geographie Physique in Meudon, near Paris, devoted their careers to the forwarding of our knowledge on mechanical rock weathering in low-temperature environments. This field-based approach, which focused on arctic basement regions as well as the Mittelgebirge of Europe, was reinforced by the experimental work being carried out at the Centre de Geomorphologie in Caen, at the instigation of Jean-Pierre Lautridou and Brigitte Van Vliet-Lanoe, and at the Laboratoire Rhodanien de Geographie in Lyon, under Bernard Etlicher and Pierre Mandier.