glacioisostasy

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English

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Etymology

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From glacio- +‎ isostasy.

Noun

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glacioisostasy (uncountable)

  1. The adjustment of the lithosphere due to the formation or melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
    • 1964, Soviet-bloc Research in Geophysics, Astronomy, and Space:
      It is assumed that glacioisostasy is the principal and virtually the only cause of oscillating movements of the earth's crust in regions with thick glaciers.
    • 1997, R. W. G. Carter, C. D. Woodroffe, Coastal Evolution: Late Quaternary Shoreline Morphodynamics, →ISBN:
      It is now widely accepted that phenomena like glacioisostasy and hydroisostasy have produced a vertical deformation of the earth's crust in virtually all coastal areas over the last 20 ka.
    • 2009, Harold G. Reading, Sedimentary Environments: Processes, Facies and Stratigraphy, →ISBN:
      Thus it appears that relative sea-level changes that are both rapid and large scale can only be brought about by glacioisostasy and glacioeustasy, and, so far as we know, major build-ups of continental ice sheets that produced significant volumes of ice are confined to several relatively short periods of the Earth's history in the latest Precambrian, the Ordovician-Silurian, Carboniferous-Permian, and the mid-Cenozoic to the present day.