Quaternary engineering geology: a summary

Abstract

Introduction The position of the summer-up is perhaps the least to be envied of all those invited to speak at this Conference: others can say their piece and then relax, or even depart (Fig 1); he has to attend every session and to hear all that is said knowing that his own remarks are likely to be made to an ever-dwindling audience. It would be nice to be able to feel that the importance of the various elements of the conference was inversely proportional to their duration (Fig 2) - just as this conference has thrown the spotlight uniquely on the Quaternary, which occupies but the smallest fraction of the geological history of our planet. We are told that the Quaternary represents the last 4 hours of the earth’s history compressed to 1 year : the summing up represents the last few minutes of the four days of the conference. As a period of geological history, the Quaternary encompasses a whole spectrum of climatic variations. Though there has been concentration in this conference on processes more or less loosely associated with glaciation, other processes have continued also. It is only by understanding the processess by which the surface of the earth has been shaped that we can hope to form a coherent picture of the distribution of soils and rocks and their properties. Our concentration in civil engineering tends to be on structures with a lifetime of, say, 50 to 100 years.