Alps Of Savoy Research Articles

Aspects d’une nouvelle enquête sur le patrimoine narratif dans les Alpes de la Savoie

Cette nouvelle enquête sur le patrimoine narratif de tradition orale dans les Alpes de la Savoie s’est inscrite dans la continuité des enquêtes de Charles Joisten, commencées dès les années 1950 et qui ont donné les recueils de contes et de récits de croyance rendus disponibles au tournant de ce siècle. Seul ce type d’enquête directe s’est révélé capable de nous permettre — en tirant parti des moyens disponibles de nos jours, notamment d’enregistrement — de donner le jour à de nouveaux exemplaires de cette matière de l’oralité. Nous exposerons ici les aspects de notre expérience sur plusieurs années de terrain ayant abouti à plusieurs publications. Nous mettrons l’accent sur les questions de forme narrative (linguistique, typologique) et de fond dans l’univers de l’oralité, tout particulièrement en ce qui concerne la narration des croyances, dans leurs contextes historiques.

Angelo Sismonda (1807–1878), pioneer of geological mapping in the Alps of Savoy and the Piedmont: a bibliography

Angelo Sismonda (Ange Sismonda) was an Italian mineralogist and geologist based in Turin during the Risorgimento who produced pioneering maps of the Alps in the Kingdom of Sardinia. Well known during his lifetime, he is now mentioned only in passing by historians and no comprehensive bibliography of his work exists. To render his work more accessible, we present a short biography and a bibliography.

Cosmogenic 10Be dating of a sackung and its faulted rock glaciers, in the Alps of Savoy (France)

Sackungs are the largest gravitational deformation observed in mountains. They are characterized by the long-term slowness of the movements, but their mechanism is still not well understood. Nowadays cosmic ray exposure (CRE) dating methods allow dating the morphologic structures involved in sackung and can contribute at the understanding of their origin. In the Alps, the 5.3 km long Arcs sackung initiated during the activity of rock glaciers. Three samples from these faulted rock glaciers provide their first CRE ages and show that at 2000 m elevation these block accumulations moved during the Younger Dryas and stopped in early Holocene. Six 10Be ages of fault scarps show that the Arcs sackung lasted only a few thousand years and stopped at about 8462 ± 432 10Be yr. They also reveal that deformation migrated upslope in agreement with a mechanism of flexural toppling of vertical layers. This unique and long gravitational event, characterized by migration of the deformation, does not support earthquake shaking as triggering mechanism for individual faults. It shows that, in the upper Isère valley, slope deformation was delayed of several thousand years after glacial debuttressing, and is not anymore active despite its fresh morphology.

‘Our common room in Geneva’ and the early exploration of the Alps of Savoy

The polite world took little interest in the Alps before the 18th century. The local inhabitants had ventured far enough to shoot chamois and to search for crystal (i.e. quartz), but few of the educated took any notice. The earliest natural philosophers to study the botany and mineralogy of these regions were from the German–speaking towns of Switzerland. Their first conclusions have not always stood the test of time; one of them, J.J. Scheuchzer (F.R.S., 1703) even reported the presence of dragons. Such frivolities did not appeal to the Calvinists of the city republic of Geneva. They could see the ‘montagnes maudites’ of Savoy to the south–east, but they never went to them. The first serious attempts to describe this world of snow and ice were made in 1741 and 1742.

Utilisation de la photogrammétrie aérienne pour les relevés traditionnels de fluctuations des langues glaciaires

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size1 - Historical backgroundSome measurements of glacier snout fluctuations in France date back to a very long time ago, especially those carried out by the former Forestry and Waters Commission, which kept a close, regular check on the behaviour of some twenty Alpine glaciers over a period of 30 - 50 years, ending in 1965. This involved the following operations : - Measurement of glacier front movement with respect to carefully maintained benchmarks Surveys of cross-sections - Occasional measurements of annual glacier movement rates. A satisfactory overall picture of glacier snout fluctuations was obtained in this way. In addition, the survey methods were coherent and ensured continuity of the observed data, which was a considerable asset. Cooperation between various organisations concerned with glacier problems officially began at a meeting of the "Iceand Snow" group of the French Committee at the International Hydrological Decade on 21st April 1967, when the following precise operational programme was drawn up : 1) Aerical photography of all glacier are as in the French Alps and data-plotting to a scale of 1 :25,000. This work is being undertaken by the French National Geographical Institute, which is producing maps to the above scale. 2) Photography of glacier fronts and snouts and data-plotting to a scale of 1:10,000. This work is of special interest to a number of research and other organisations. Twenty-five glaciers were listed for "monitoring" under this programme. The Ministry of Agriculture finally decided in 1973 to resume the public service role it had held in this field until 1965, having realized the need to keep a close, constant watch on the behaviour of the country's glaciers. The Snow Research Division of CTGREF (Rural Engineering, Forestry and Waters Commission) was made responsible for preparing and implementing the survey programme and keeping records of the observed data.2 - Programme of operations, and work completed to dateThe Snow Research Division has concentrated on the twenty glaciers formerly surveyed by the Forestry and Waters Commission. To restore continuity of observed data - a most important requirement - the Division made it its first job to locate and recondition the pre-1965 benchmarks with the minimum of delay. This work was duly completed. As previously mentioned, the surveys are to be carried out by aerial photogrammetry, which involves the following operations : - Stereo-preparation of areas to be covered - Photography - Compilation of a file for each glacier, listing all control points, their Lambert coordinates and those of the pre-1965 benchmarks. Photography is to be completed in three years, by covering one group of glaciers each year. The following work has been completed to date : 1973 : A survey of Mont Blanc glacier snouts, by conventional methods as time was lacking for preparation of a photogrammetrie survey. 1974 : Stereo-preparation for the group of glaciers in the Savoy Alps. Owing to premature snowfall, however, no photographs could be taken. 1975 : Stero-preparation for the group of glaciers in the Oisans Alps, followed by photography of these and the glaciers in the Savoy Alps. The programme for 1976 provides for stereo-preparation and photography covering the Mont-Blanc glacier group. 3. Technical details3.1. Stereo-preparationA number of points to either side of the flight paths are plotted on a Lambert coordinate system. To allow traversing by aerotriangulation at the plotting stage, the flight paths run outside the glacier. The ground points are marked with 1.7 m x 1.7 m black plastic sheets with a 0.6 m x 0.6 m white square in the middle. 3.2. Aerial photography The photographs, to an average scale of 1:15,000, are taken from an average height of 1,500 m, using a "Wild RC 7" 14 x 14 plate camera with an "Aviogon" wide·angle lens of 100 mm focal length. The camera is installed in a "Pilatus" survey aircraft and operates with 80 % overlap. 3.3. Use of the photographs for glacier research The photographs can be used for either of the following purposes : 1) To produce plans to scales of 1:5,000 or 1 :2,000, longitudinal and cross-sections. 2) For direct numerical calculation of changes in volume between camera "takes", using a squaring method or calculating the volume from the longitudinal and cross-sections in much the same way as for calculating excavation volumes on building sites. Either method gives vertical and horizontal point positions to within 0.4 m. Programs are available for both methods.

Oil cancer in the Savoy Alps and the Birmingham region: a comparison.

Oil cancer in the Savoy Alps and the Birmingham region: a comparison.

From Geneva to Sion across the Nappes in 1909: alpine geology then and now

This is the relation of a geological tour in the Alps led by the author, in which three young Edinburgh geologists took part. Their goal was to see, on the spot, evidences of thrusting. From Geneva to Sion they crossed two Nappes of the Pre-alps and three Nappes of the High Calcareous Alps. The party travelled light on foot, with a porter called Cola, a chamois hunter. They visited the Savoy Alps between the Lake of Geneva and the Giffre river. They climbed Mont Buet and went to Les Granges de Salvan, a small summer resort, where by good luck they met Professor James Geikie. Then the party went on to Salanfe, a splendid corrie at the foot of the Dents du Midi. They studied the core of the Morcles Nappe in the great wall of the Tour Salliere. At Anzeindaz, on the southern side of the Diablerets, they spent several days, waiting for good weather to illuminate a splendid phenomenon: three Nappes overriding one another. Sections given in the text enable the reader to grasp the differences in the ‶Geology″ as known then and now. Anecdotes cheer up the text.

Observations de metamorphisme du Trias dans les Alpes autochtones au lac de la Girotte (Savoie)

Abstract Field work, confirmed by laboratory petrographic studies, demonstrates that autochthonous Triassic formations of the Girotte lake area in the Savoy Alps, France, were subjected to regional metamorphic processes which also caused metamorphism of the underlying crystalline basement rocks but which did not affect Liassic strata to any considerable degree. The Triassic formations probably constituted an obstacle to the advance of the metamorphic front, indicating that alteration was a process of solid diffusion.

La France et ses Colonies au Début du XX e Siècle

THIS is one volume of an excellent series of regional studies “at the beginning of the twentieth century,” throughout which M. M. Fallex's has been the principal hand. We find here a proper conception of geographical study thoroughly well applied. In the first part of the work a general survey of France is provided—its position, area, configuration, structure, climate, hydrography, and population. In the second and most important part the country is divided into natural regions, each one of which is considered in succession on the same lines as those of the general survey. The division itself is worthy of commendation and notice—(i.) the Central Massif, subdivided between the east and centre and the west and south, (ii.) the Pyrenean region, (iii.) the basin of Aquitaine, (iv.) the Alps of Savoy, (v.) the Alps of Dauphiné and Haute-Provence, (vi.) the Jura, (vii.) the Saône-Rhone valley, (viii.) the Midi, (ix.) the north-east, (x.) the north, (xi.) the basin of Paris in three subdivisions, (xii.) Brittany. Next follows political and economic geography, worked out no less satisfactorily than the regional. France itself occupies nearly five-sixths of the volume; the colonies, therefore, come in for what is perhaps disproportionately scanty treatment.

New books

Early Travellers in Scotland (1295–1689). Edited by P. Hume Brown, Author of The Life of George Buchanan. Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1891. Pp. xxvi + 300. Price 14s. Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan. By Major R E. Wingate, D.S.O., E.A. Assistant Adjutant‐General for Intelligence, Egyptian Army. With 30 Maps and Plans. London : Macmillan and Co., 1891. Pp. 617. Price 30s. net. The Caliphate; its Rise, Decline, and Fall. Prom Original Sources: By Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I. London: Religious Tract Society, 1891. Pp. 608. Price 10s. 6d. My Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa. By Thomas Heazle Parke, D.C.L., Army Medical Staff. London : Sampson Low and Co., 1891. Pp. 525. Price 21s. Studies in Jewish Statistics, Social, Vital, and Anthropometric. By Joseph Jacobs. London : D. Nutt, 1891. Seas and Lands. By Sir Edwin Arnold, K.C.I.E., C.S.I. London : Longmans, Green and Co., 1891. Pp.535. Price 31s. Denmark ; its Medical Organisation, Hygiene, and Demography. Published with subvention of the Danish Government. Presented to the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, London, 1891. Copenhagen : Jul. G. Jellerup; London : J. and A. Churchill, 1891. Pp. 467. Numerous‐Map‐diagrams and Woodcuts. Géographic ancienne de la Basse‐Egypte. Par le Viscomte Jacques de Rougé. Paris : J. Rothschild, 1891. Pp. 175. Delagoa Bay: Its Natives and Natural History. By Eose Monteiro. London : George Philip and Son, 1891. Pp. 274. The Ouse. By A. J. Foster, M.A., Vicar of Wootton, Bedfordshire. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1891. Pp. 223. Savoie. Par Paul Joanne. Paris : Hachette et Cie., 1891. Pp. 379. Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy. Sixteenth edition. London : John Murray, 1891. Price 10s. Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland. Part I.: Switzerland, without the Pennine Alps. Part ii. : The Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, the Italian Lakes, and part of Dauphiné. Eighteenth edition. London: John Murray, 1891. Price 10s.

Mr. Ruskin's Lecture on the Savoy Alps

Of Mr. Ruskin's admirable lecture on the Alps of Savoy, delivered at the Royal Institution, we have already given an abstract at p. 256. We recur again to that subject because there were two points so forcibly and so well put by Mr. Ruskin, and so seemingly pregnant with the germs of future progress to our science, as to merit the special attention of geologists. These were the inefficacy of ice to scoop out lake-basins, and the mighty wave-like action of force that crumbles the gigantic rock-masses of our mountains almost into wave-like breakers ready to nod and fall. “Geology,” well remarked Mr. Ruskin in his opening words, “properly divides itself into two branches,—the study, first, of the materials and chronology of deposits; and, secondly, of their present forms.” The interest attaching to the relics of organic life, without doubt, has carried geologists away from the study of external forms; and this almost exclusion of regard for structural phenomena is the more to be regretted that it is the threshold of the grand field of record of ancient physical phenomena. The gigantic mountain-wave is not heaved up and rolled onwards in a few moments, like the surging waves of the sea; the particles of rock-masses are not quickly moved about like the water-atoms of the dancing ripples on our rivers, but slowly—slowly indeed—are the almost immovably linked-together particles forced onwards by some ponderous pressure, some solemn but irresistible force, due perhaps to the very strain of the earth's altering rotation or the leverage of its surface inequalities upon its central axis.

On the Geological Structure of the Alps, Apennines and Carpathians, more especially to prove a transition from Secondary to Tertiary rocks, and the development of Eocene deposits in Southern Europe

The numerous mineral distinctions of the various rocks composing the Alps, and their separation into more or less crystalline masses, were the chief objects of the researches of the illustrious De Saussure; and some time elapsed before it was thought possible to bring these mountains into anything like a comparison with the sedimentary deposits of other parts of Europe, the determination of which had been established by their normal order of position and their imbedded organic remains. As soon however as Brochant (1808) declared his belief, that large crystalline masses of the Central and Savoy Alps, which had previously been considered of primary age, belonged to the earlier sedimentary or transition period, a new field of research was prepared; and Dr. Buckland made a still more important step, in a very able essay, wherein he boldly synchronized, in a general manner, the so-called transition rocks of Brochant, with our secondary British types*. Stimulated by such examples, and also by the researches of Brongniart, Von Buch, E. de Beaumont, Boue, Lill von Lilienstein and others. Professor Sedgwick and myself published our views in a memoir in the Transactions of the Geological Society†, accompanied by a general geological map of the Eastern Alps. Since that period, however, much progress having been made, by applying to this chain the more accurate knowledge of the order of equivalent formations, I had the strongest desire to revisit my old ground, to compare it with those regions of the Alps formerly unexplored by me, yet rendered

On Fossil Plants from the Anthracite Formation of the Alps of Savoy

The question which I propose to bring before the notice of the Society on this occasion may he considered one of the most curious in geology, with relation to the distribution of organic remains and their value in determining the age of rocks. Attention was first called to it by the celebrated French geologist, M. Elie de Beaumont, in a paper which was published in the fourteenth volume of the ‘Annales des Sciences Naturelles,’ in the year 1828. He described the strata observed in the neighbourhood of the village of Petit Cœur, near Moutiers in the Tarentaise, and stated that beds of black schist, which abound with impressions of ferns and other plants identical with those of the coal formation , are there found interposed between beds of argillaceous limestone containing belemnites. He appears to have completely satisfied himself that the strata containing ferns and those containing belemnites really belonged to the same geological epoch, and he refers the whole group, without hesitation, to the age of the lias . This paper was followed by one from M. Adolphe Brongniart, stating the result of his examination of the fossil plants from this anomalous deposit. He enumerates nineteen species, besides some others which were not in a state to admit of determination ; and of these nineteen he pronounces seventeen to be positively identical with species of the coal formation, the remaining two being peculiar and previously undescribed. In a subsequent communication, published m the fifteenth volume of the ‘Annales,’ M. Elie de

XII. Illustrations of the viscous theory of glacier motion. - Part I. Containing experiments on the flow of plastic bodies, and observations on the phenomena of lava streams

In the concluding chapter of my “Travels in the Alps of Savoy,” I have shown how the obscure relations of the parts of a semifluid or viscous mass in motion (such as I have attempted to prove that the glaciers may be compared to) may be illustrated by experiment. The larger models, these described and figured, showed very clearly the precise effects of friction upon the motion of such a mass. They were formed of plaster of Paris, mixed with glue, and run in irregular channels, and the relative velocities of the top and bottom, the sides and centre of such a pasty mass were displayed by the alternating layers of two coloured pastes, which were successively poured in at the head of the model valleys. The boundaries of the coloured pastes were squeezed by the mutual pressures into greatly elongated curves whose convexity was in the direction of motion; and in a vertical medial section, the retardation of the bottom and the mutual action of the posterior and anterior parts, shaped the bounding surface of two colours into a spoon-like form.

Travels Through the Alps of Savoy, and Other Parts of the Pennine Chain; With Observations on the Phenomena of Glaciers

The renowned geologist James D. Forbes (1809–68) presents an account of his systematic exploration of alpine mountain regions and glaciers in this important 1843 publication. Forbes' graphic descriptions of alpine scenery and his mountaineering feats are combined with detailed records of his scientific research and experiments. The study cemented Forbes' reputation in the field, which was later to be commemorated by the naming of the Aiguille Forbes in the Alps and of Mount Forbes in both Canada and New Zealand. The aim in writing the book, says Forbes, was to 'illustrate the physical geography of a particular district in one of the most frequented regions of the Alps'. In doing this, he draws upon the important work of the 'bold mountaineer' Horace Benedict de Saussure, whose feats and achievements Forbes clearly admired. The book is still viewed today as one of the most influential and important publications on mountaineering.