Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Ice wedges and their relation to climate

Publication at Faculty of Science |
2011

Abstract

Ice wedges are cracks in the ground formed by a narrow or thin piece of ice that extends downwards into the ground up to several meters. The ice wedges usually appears in a polygonal pattern known as ice wedge polygons that measures up to 15-40 meters wide (French, 2008).

Polygonal pattern of ice wedges, respectively their secondary filling, called pseudomorphoses, located on the territory of our country (Fig. 3), but also elsewhere in the temperate latitudes of Central and Western Europe. The findings of these pseudomorhoses of ice wedges show a significant climate change in the geological past and show expansion of permafrost and active layer thickness in Central Europe during the last glacial period, when polygonal patterns of ice wedges formed.

Polygonal patterns of ice wedges in our country are mostly pentagonal shape and they are 3-25 m wide (Nyplová, Křížek, 2010). Width own ice wedges reach values of 0,5 - 6 m.