glacioisostasy

English

Etymology

From glacio- +‎ isostasy.

Noun

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.