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An arete is a thin, almost knife-like, ridge of rock which is typically formed when two glaciars erode parallel U-shaped valleys. The arête is a thin ridge of rock that is left separating the two valleys. |
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The ice sheets lose material by several processes, including surface melting, evaporation, wind erosion (deflation), iceberg calving, and the melting of the bottom surfaces of floating ice shelves by warmer seawater. |
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It is an amphitheatre-like valley, or valley head, formed at the head of a glacier by erosion. |
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Continental Glacier [image] |
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A glacier that spreads out from a central mass of ice. It covers a large amount of space near the arctic and antarctic poles. | |
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A crevasse is a fracture in a glacier caused by a large tensile stress at or near the glacier's surface. |
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A drunlin is an elongated whale-shaped hill formed by glacial action. |
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A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that deviates from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. These rocks were carried to their current locations by glacial ice. |
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An esker is a long, winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel. They can be several miles in length and, because of their peculiar uniform shape, somewhat resemble railroad embankments. |
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Firn is partially-compacted neve, a type of snow that has been left over from past seasons and has been recrystalized into a substance denser than névé. It is ice that is at an intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice. |
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A deep U-shaped valley with steep sides that leads down from a cirque and was excavated by a glacier.
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A glacier is a large, slow-moving mass of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, that slowly deforms and flows in response to gravity and high pressure. |
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A sharp pyramidal peak on a mountain, ic created by glacial erosion. |
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An ice cap is an ice mass that covers less than 50 000 km² of land area (usually covering a highland area). |
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An ice front is the place where a glacier thins and ends. The ice front's position changes as the glacier moves or melts. |
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An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km^2. |
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A kame is a geological feature, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier, and is then deposited on the land surface with further melting of the glacier. |
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A kettle hole is formed by blocks of ice that are separated from the main glacier - perhaps the ice front stagnated or retreated or perhaps ice blocks were washed out from the glacier during a glacier flood. |
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Moraine refers to any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris (soil and rock) which can occur in currently glaciated and formerly glaciated regions, such as those areas acted upon by a past ice age. |
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A nunatak is an exposed, often rocky element of a ridge, mountain, or peak not covered with ice or snow within (or at the edge of) an ice field or glacier. |
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[image] Deposit of sand and gravel carried by running water from the melting ice of a glacier and laid down in stratified deposits. |
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A sandur is a glacial outwash plain formed of sediments deposited by meltwater at the terminus of a glacier. |
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Roches Moutonnees [image] |
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A roche moutonnees is a rock formation created by the passing of a glacier. When a glacier erodes down to bedrock, it can form tear-drop shaped hills that taper in the up-ice direction. |
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Rock flour, or glacial flour, consists of clay-sized particles of rock, generated by glacial erosion or by artificial grinding to a similar size. |
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The snow line is the point above which, or poleward of which, snow and ice cover the ground throughout. |
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Striations means a series of ridges, furrows or linear marks, and are used in several ways. |
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Glacial till is that part of glacial drift which was deposited directly by the glacier. |
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When glaciers pass down a mountain it usually follows an old river bed. The river leaves a v-shape in the bottom of the valley and has smaller stream beds where streams used to bring water into the larger river. |
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