Topic 11: Recent Ireland

In our last lecture, we’ll finish the story of how Ireland formed, taking us through the time of the….well, you’ll find out…all the way through the Ice Ages to the present day. We’ll also try to bring together some of the threads we’ve been considering throughout the lectures, answering some questions we asked right back at the start of the first lecture.

Lecture

Lecture slides: L11 Recent Ireland

Reading

I suggest reading Chapter 15 of Lutgens and Tarbuck 2015 Essentials of Geology. This is the chapter on Glaciers and Glaciation, and it will help you to understand the ice ages which shaped modern Ireland.

An alternative might be Chapter 19 Glacial Systems of Ritter’s The Physical Environment, available as a free eBook.

I would also suggest reading Chapters 12-16 of Understanding Earth Processes Rocks and the Geology of Ireland by Sleeman et al. These are the chapters on Ireland from the Jurassic to the Quaternary, and so will more directly expand on what we cover in the lecture.

Additional

In the lecture, I discussed geoengineering of roads, particularly the A2 coast road in Co. Antrim, and I would like you to read the attached paper by Hughes et al. to reinforce this. The paper goes into some detail on monitoring methods - you don’t need to understand these completely, although I’d like you to get from that at least a taste of what’s involved in dealing with rock instability of this kind. However, the main point of suggesting you to read this article is to better understand how the geology of the area makes geoengineering more difficult.

The report identifying Co. Down as a potential location for a High Strength Rock (HSR) Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for spent nuclear fuel can be found here.