Composition and morphotectonic interpretation of the Kiellajohka drainage basin, Finnish Lapland

The study area comprises 495 km2 and consists of 256 first order, 66 second order, 11 third order and 2 fourth order river basins. One important objective has been to determine whether it is possible to arrive at any conclusions concerning the development of relief by analysing the topological, geometrical and symmetrical features of the basins, and to see if possible local block movements are reflected in these features. The greatest difficulty in a task like this is that no initial relief from which further development proceeds can be constructed with any degree of certainty. Therefore the study is most nearly a discussion introducing view‑points which differ somewhat from earlier ones for solving the problem. Also, the applicability of several new quantitative methods to analysis of relief evolution is tested. The relations especially between certain geometrical properties of the river basins seem to agree with the general laws based on results obtained in other basins. This indicates that the climato‑genetic interpretation, according to which the effect on relief of erosion factors other than fluvial ones has, in general, been weak, is correct. Statistically reliable rank correlations in the distribution of real symmetric features and symmetric features provided by the model used are extremely rare within the separate blocks in the area studied. On the other hand, the postulated pattern of crustal movements both in space and time is ‑ both clearly uniform and logically understandable in the light of some geometrical and hypsometrical facts revealed in the relief. The inheritance principle, which has been accepted as a general indication of the relief evolution, presupposes that the follow‑up effects of block movements on such sensitive features as the symmetrical characteristics of river basins cannot be manifested in their full strength

Problems concerning the origin of inselbergs in Finnish Lapland

This preliminary paper outlines the problem of attempting to ascertain the nature of inselbergs in Finnish Lapland. In the area of the Kemijoki drainage basin (size 32 000 kM2) it has been possible to distinguish altogether 60 forma­tions which fulfil the strictest criteria for inselbergs, i.e. clearness of a foot nick and steepness of hill slopes. It is not possible to decide, at present, to which of two alternative planation models, namely etchplanation or pediplanation, greater importance should be assigned in explaining relief evolution in the study area. Although all disconformities older than Mesozoic have probably been eroded to an unidentifiable extent, there is good reason to suppose that the main characteristics of the relief, including also in­selbergs, originated as early as the Late Cretaceous or at least in the Paleo­cene

Shape development of sandstone cobbles associated with the Säkylä-Mellilä esker, southwest Finland

Sandstone cobble morphology and lithological composition of till, esker and beach material were studied, including about 22 000 morphometric measurements on stones in the 16 ... 128 min size range and about 11000 lithologic identifications on stones in the 4 ... 128 mm size range. Glacial transportation did not lead to intensive fracturing of the material which evidently originated from the sources nearby, and from relatively unweathered bedrock. Glaciofluvial processes, on the contrary, were mark­edly more powerful, and brought about more radical changes in shape, and strong increase in roundness. During glaciofluvial transportation the mate­rial travelled 6 ... 10 km further, and at the same time the mixing of material was thorough. Shape, as definable in terms of symmetry, but also as measured in terms of axial ratio, was revealed as very persistent. Where change in shape did occur, it usually was a reinforcement of the original shape. Ideally this became apparent under beach processes on the cobbles of 32 ... 64 mm size class. Not even the most delicate indices can provide a detailed enough picture of the complex changes undergone by stones of a given lithological composi­tion becoming subject to a series of processes, as the intensity and duration of energy flows in the processes vary extremely widely under natural condi­tions, and many an apparently well‑defined picture becomes complicated by the countervailing effect of mechanisms in the same process