At the same time, the site of Geneva was buried under ice and the lobe of the Rhône glacier was crushing the suburbs of Lyon… At least ten times during the Quaternary era, the Alps were covered by ice fields stretching from Sisteron to Munich!
To create these images and make past glaciations visible, Sylvain Coutterand studies the traces that giant glaciers have left on the landscape: blocks of rock carried hundreds of kilometres from their place of origin, planed rocks, moraines long since covered by vegetation…
The author retraces the birth of this science, geomorphology, whose discoveries have made it possible to reconstruct the past states of Alpine glaciers. More than 50 maps are presented in this atlas to give a sense of the scale of the great glaciations and the speed of the current retreat of glaciers.
These images of my prehistory of Alpine glaciers are a powerful call for reflection at a time when their disappearance is a sad probability.
If you feel the urge to go and see for yourself in the field, L'atlas des glaciers disparus offers 10 discovery hikes to the most beautiful glaciers in the Alps.
There is urgency: "Climate change, if left unchecked, will soon finish transforming these landscapes to which we are so deeply attached," writes climatologist Jean Jouzel, member of the Académie des sciences, in his preface.
Main features
- A journey into our glacial past to better understand today's alpine landscapes.
