Glaciers & Glacial Landforms Flashcards
What are glaciers?
Large areas of slow moving ice due to the accumulation of compacted snow.
What are alpine’s?
Found in mountainous regions, also known as mountain glaciers or valley glaciers.
What are ice sheets?
Formed over larger area of land, large sheets that spread out from the center.
Plucking
Glaciers freeze the joints of the bedrock inside and carries away large pieces of debris.
Abrasion
Glaciers scrape and polish the landscapes, making it either smooth or causes cuts in it as they carry debris downhill.
Aretes
When 2 cirque basins meet. the dividing ridge between them is called an Aretes.
Col
When an aretes erodes between 2 cirque basins, forming a mountain pass.
Horn
The peak of a cirque basin that forms a pyramid structure. Basically the tip of a mountain.
Glacier Landforms
Moraines - the deposition of rock as it’s brought down a valley. This causes ripples in the landscape.
Drumlins - oval shaped hills underneath glacial ice, caused by the flow of ice downhill.
Eskers - deposits of glacial material made by melting glaciers.
Kettle Lakes - shallow depositions in the landscape formed by retracting glacial ice.