Rapid retreat of glaciers and icesheets in the Arctic is exposing increasingly extensive ice-free land margins. These unique environments are at the distinct interface between active glacial systems and their surrounding landscapes: they are geomorphologically inherited from past and ongoing deglaciation yet remain dynamically coupled to the ice masses they border, through meltwater, sediment, and permafrost degradation. This proximity distinguishes them from more distal periglacial or paraglacial settings and drives a characteristic, but still poorly integrated, suite of surface processes, including permafrost thaw and associated ground instability, coastal erosion and progradation, vegetation and surface change, fluvial and glacio-fluvial sediment transport, relative sea-level change, and natural hazards such as landslides and glacial lake outburst floods. These transforming landscapes also represent spaces where local communities pursue traditional livelihoods and practices.
This session invites contributions addressing any of these processes, individually or in combination, within ice-free land margins across the Arctic, spanning the full transition zone from the ice margin to the coast, including, but not limited to, Greenland, Svalbard, Iceland and Canada. We welcome studies using field observations, remote sensing, geochronology, numerical modelling, or process-based approaches, at timescales ranging from contemporary monitoring to Holocene reconstruction. We particularly encourage contributions that examine linkages between processes (e.g. how permafrost thaw modulates sediment delivery to coasts, or how deglaciation history conditions present-day landscape sensitivity), and comparative studies across regions. By bringing together researchers working on different processes within this shared setting, the session aims to build a more integrated understanding of how these environments are responding, and will continue to respond, to sustained ice-mass loss.