Glaciers 🧊 Flashcards
What is a glacier?
A glacier is a large body of ice, moving slowly doing a slope or over a wide area of land.
What is a good example of a glacier?
The Mer De Glace glacier in the French Alps
Where does the legacy of ancient glaciers live on?
In lake district
What can glaciers do to the land around them?
They can cover large areas of the Earth and shape the landscape around them
What are the 3 processes by which glaciation affects the surrounding area?
Erosion, transportation, and deposition
How does a glacier form?
Snow falls, but not all of it melts. So then, lots of different layers of snow lay on top of each other.
The bottom layer of the snow gets compressed by the top layers .
Air is pushed out and the snow turns to ice forming a glacier.
Overtime, where does the glacier go under the force of gravity?
Under the force of gravity, the glacier gradually moves down the slope
What is the difference between an ice sheet and a glacier?
Masses of ice which cover large areas of a continent are ice sheets
masses of ice which occupy a mountain are called glaciers
What were the six countries covered with ice during the last ice age in Europe?
Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark
What are times without large ice sheets called during an ice age?
Times without large ice sheets are called interglacial periods
What are times with large ice sheets during an ice age called?
glacial periods
Where are the biggest glaciers found today?
Antarctica and Greenland
What percentage of the Earth surface is ice covered today?
10%
Where can smaller glaciers be found?
At higher altitude in various mountain ranges in the lower middle and higher latitudes
