Permafrost in steep bedrock is abundant in many cold-mountain areas, and its degradation can cause slope instability that is unexpected and unprecedented in location, magnitude, frequency, and timing. These phenomena bear consequences for the understanding of landscape evolution, natural hazards, and the safe and sustainable 
operation of high-mountain infrastructure. Permafrost in steep bedrock is an emerging field of research. Knowledge of rock temperatures, ice content, mechanisms of degradation, and the processes that link warming and destabilization is often fragmental. 
In this article we provide a review and discussion of existing literature and pinpoint important questions. Ice-filled joints are common in bedrock permafrost and possibly actively widened by ice segregation. Broad evidence of destabilization by warming permafrost exists despite problems of attributing individual events to this phenomenon 
with certainty. Convex topography such as ridges, spurs, and peaks is often subject to faster and deeper thaw than other areas. Permafrost degradation in steep bedrock can be 
strongly affected by percolating water in fractures. This degradation by advection is difficult to predict and can lead to quick and deepdevelopment of thaw corridors along 
fractures in permafrost and potentially destabilize much greater volumes of rock than conduction would. Although most research on steep bedrock permafrost originates from the Alps, it will likely gain importance in other geographic regions with mountain permafrost.

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Permafrost in steep bedrock slopes and its temperature‐related destabilization following climate change

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Permafrost and climate in Europe: Monitoring and modelling thermal, geomorphological and geotechnical responses

A review of ice rheology for ice sheet modelling

Why study glaciers? some basic concepts mass balance flow of a crystalline material the velocity field in a glacier temperature distribution in polar ice sheets the coupling between a glacier and its bed water flow in and under glaciers - geomorphic implications stress and deformation stress and velocity distribution in an idealized glacier applications of stress and deformation principles to classical problems response of glaciers to changes in mass balance problems

Principles of glacier mechanics

Thermal evolution of a differentiated Ganymede and implications for surface features

Cylindrical samples of ice with 0.0 to 0.35 volume fraction fine sand were tested in unconfined uniaxial compression at stresses between 5.3 and 6.4 bar and at temperatures between −7.4 and −9.4° C. Secondary creep rates were obtained from the slope of the total strain vs. time curve and were normalized to 5.6 bar and −9.1° C. Creep rates in ice with low sand concentrations were in some cases higher and in other cases lower than in clean ice. However at higher sand concentrations the creep rate decreases exponentially with increasing volume fraction sand. The latter results are in general agreement with theories developed to explain dispersion hardening of metals, and suggest that each sand grain is surrounded by a tangled network of secondary dislocations which impede passage of primary glide dislocations.

Brian B. Dahlin

Papers

Creep of Ice Containing Dispersed Fine Sand