Frost-cracked landscape
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Frost-cracked landscape

by Jana Eichel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Quite unexpected from the gentle foreground of grassy plains and rolling hills, the barren mountains of New Zealand’s Craigieburn Range have been shaped by intense frost-cracking activity. On their bare summits, frost action cracks open rocks, whose pieces then fall down as rockfalls and produce the vast scree slopes covering the hillslopes in the back of the photo.