The simulator visualizes how a small initial irregularity in a subglacial till bed interacts with moving ice and pressurized meltwater to progressively amplify into a streamlined, teardrop-shaped drumlin, while also showing how consistently aligned drumlin swarms encode the direction of past ice flow.
Adjust the ice flow speed, till water saturation, and initial bump size to see how these variables influence whether and how quickly a streamlined drumlin shape emerges. Step through simulated time to watch the feedback loop between ice flow, water pressure, and till deformation reshape the bump into an elongated hill, then switch to swarm view to see how many such hills align under one consistent flow direction, and rotate the flow direction to observe how the entire swarm's orientation responds.
Sliders for ice flow speed, subglacial till water saturation, and initial bed irregularity size; a time-step control to advance the formation instability process; a toggle between single-drumlin cross-section view and multi-drumlin swarm view; and a flow-direction rotation control to demonstrate ice-flow reconstruction from swarm alignment.
Drumlin swarms can contain more than 10,000 individual hills, and some of the largest known fields, such as those covering parts of the Canadian Prairies and central Ireland, stretch across tens of thousands of square kilometers, making them among the most extensive landform patterns produced anywhere on Earth's surface by a single geological process.
The simulator visualizes how a small initial irregularity in a subglacial till bed interacts with moving ice and pressurized meltwater to progressively amplify into a streamlined, teardrop-shaped drumlin, while also showing how consistently aligned drumlin swarms encode the direction of past ice flow.
The simulator visualizes how a small initial irregularity in a subglacial till bed interacts with moving ice and pressurized meltwater to progressively amplify into a streamlined, teardrop-shaped drumlin, while also showing how consistently aligned drumlin swarms encode the direction of past ice flow.
Adjust the ice flow speed, till water saturation, and initial bump size to see how these variables influence whether and how quickly a streamlined drumlin shape emerges. Step through simulated time to watch the feedback loop between ice flow, water pressure, and till deformation reshape the bump into an elongated hill, then switch to swarm view to see how many such hills align under one consistent flow direction, and rotate the flow direction to observe how the entire swarm's orientation responds.
Drumlin swarms can contain more than 10,000 individual hills, and some of the largest known fields, such as those covering parts of the Canadian Prairies and central Ireland, stretch across tens of thousands of square kilometers, making them among the most extensive landform patterns produced anywhere on Earth's surface by a single geological process.