Permafrost Creep and Rock Glacier Dynamics z Wilfried Haeberli, 1 * Bernard Hallet, 2 Lukas Arenson, 3 Roger Elconin, 4 Ole Humlum, 5 Andreas Ka ¨a ¨b, 1,y Viktor Kaufmann, 6 Branko Ladanyi, 7 Norikazu Matsuoka, 8 Sarah Springman 9 and Daniel Vonder Mu ¨hll 10 1 Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 2 Quaternary Research Center and Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA 3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 4 1734 Bannister Road, Anchorage, Alaska, USA 5 Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 6 Institute of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria 7 Northern Engineering Center (CINEP), Ecole Polytechnique, Universite ´ de Montre ´al, Montre ´al, Canada 8 Institute of Geoscience, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan 9 ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 10 University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland ABSTRACT This review paper examines thermal conditions (active layer and permafrost), internal composition (rock and ice components), kinematics and rheology of creeping perennially frozen slopes in cold mountain areas. The aim is to assemble current information about creep in permafrost and rock glaciers from diverse published sources into a single paper that will be useful in studies of the flow and deformation of subsurface ice and their surface manifestations not only on Earth, but also on Mars. Emphasis is placed on quantitative information from drilling, borehole measurements, geophysical soundings, photogrammetry, laboratory experiments, etc. It is evident that quantitative holistic treatment of permafrost creep and rock glaciers requires consideration of: (a) rock weathering, snow avalanches and rockfall, with grain-size sorting on scree slopes; (b) freezing processes and ice formation in scree at sub-zero temperatures containing abundant fine material as well as coarse-grained blocks; (c) coupled thermohydro-mechanical aspects of creep and failure processes in frozen rock debris; (d) kinematics of non-isotropic, heterogeneous and layered, ice-rich permafrost on slopes with long transport paths for coarse surface material from the headwall to the front and, in some cases, subsequent re-incorporation into an advancing rock glacier causing corresponding age inversion at PERMAFROST AND PERIGLACIAL PROCESSES Permafrost and Periglac. Process. 17: 189–214 (2006) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ppp.561 * Correspondence to: Professor Wilfried Haeberli, Glaciology and Geomorphodynamics Group, Geography Department, Univer- sity of Zurich, Switzerland. E-mail: haeberli@geo.unizh.ch y Present address: Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. z Final report of the Task Force on Permafrost Creep and Rock Glacier Dynamics. This Task Force was established in 1998 by the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the International Commission on Snow and Ice (ICSI; now the Commission on Cryospheric Sciences, CCS) with Wilfried Haeberli and Bernard Hallet as co-chairs in order: (1) to define the state of knowledge relevant to the flow and evolution of perennially frozen ice/rock mixtures; and (2) to provide an overview of ongoing studies that obtain quantitative information from drilling, geophysical soundings, geodetic/photogrammetric monitoring and measurements of surface conditions. For this purpose, a special half-day workshop took place on 27 March 2001 within the framework of the First European Permafrost Conference in Rome, Italy (Rea, 2001). Further discussions followed during and after the 8th International Conference on Permafrost in Zurich (20–25 July 2003). The present contribution is based on the corresponding results and constitutes the final product of the Task Force. The following colleagues served as lead authors of the main subsections in this report: thermal conditions: Ole Humlum (surface, active layer) and Daniel Vonder Mu ¨hll (boreholes); composition: Norikazu Matsuoka (rocks) and Roger Elconin (ice); geometry/kinematics: Andreas Ka ¨a ¨b and Viktor Kaufmann (photogrammetry, geodesy); and rheology: Sarah Springman, Lukas Arenson (mountains) and Branko Ladanyi (lowlands). Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 6 June 2006 Revised 20 June 2006 Accepted 20 June 2006