Glacier Vocab
Terms
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- Arete
- A sharp divide that separates two adjourning cirques
- Basal slip
- A mechanism of glacial movement in which the ice mass slides over the surface below
- Calving
- The process by which a block of a glacier breaks off and falls into the sea to form an iceberg
- Cirque
- A semicircular basin found at the head of a glacial valley formed by a valley glacier
- Continental Glacier
-
a large sheet of ice that covers a large part of a continent
- Crevasse
- A great fissure or crack in the glacier
- Drumlin
- a long, smooth, canoe-shaped hill that is usually found in groups, shaped by an advancing glacier
- Glacier
- A large mass of ice and snow that exist year-round and moves under the influence of gravity
- Erosion
- the removal and transport of materials by natural agents such as wind and running water
- Erratic
- a large boulder that has been transported into an area by a glacier
- Esker
- a long, winding ridge formed when sand and gravel fill meltwater tunnels beneath a glacier
- Firn
- partially compacted and refrozen snow which has yet to become a glacier
- Hanging Valley
- a tributary valley that enters a glacial trough at a considerable height above the floor of the trough
- horn
- a pyramid shaped peak formed where 3 or more cirques meet
- Iceberg
- a massive floating body of ice broken away from a glacier
- Kettle Lakes
- a bowl-like hollow found in deposits of glacial outwash; formed when a large block of ice was left behind by a glacier melted
- Ice front
- The end of a glacier
- Medical Moraine
- A ridge of till formed when lateral moraines from 2 coalescing valley glaciers join
- Meltwater
- the water released by the melting of snow or ice
- Outwash
- sediment deposited in front of a glacier by streams or meltwater
- Lateral Moraine
- a ridge of till along the side of a valley glacier composed primarily of debris that fell to the glacier from the valley walls
- Outwash plain
- A broad,stratified gently sloped deposit of sediment formed beyond the terminal moraine by streams from a melting glacier
- Plastic Flow
- A type of glacier movement that occurs within the glaciers, below a depth of approximately 50 meters in which the ice is not fractured
- Plucking
- the process by which pieces of bedrock are lifted out of place by a glacier
- Snow line
- the lowest elevation that permanent snows reach in summer
- Striations
- long parallel scratching left on rocks and bedrocks by glacial movement
- Terminal Moraine
- the end moraine marking the farthest advance of a glacier
- Till
- unsorted and unstratified rock material deposited directly by glacial ice
- Valley glacier
- a long, slow moving, wedge shaped glacier that moves within valley walls
- U shaped valley
- when a glacier erodes its valley, a u shape is formed, side walls steep ad curved, valley is almost flat