Glaciers- Overview Flashcards
Mass Balance
This is the accumulation of snow fall measured against melting, evaporation or breakaway.
When do glaciers form?
When accumulation exceeds ablation.
What is required for formation?
Specific climate conditions
What are the two zones of the glacier?
Ablation and Accumulation, seperated by an equilibirum line.
What is the pathway of meltwater?
Deposits into sea, carving structures, depositing sands, silts and gravles.
What are the ways glacial movement occurs?
Sliding, Ice Deformation and deformation of the glacial bed.
What is rate of movement of a glacier dependent on?
Gravitational Forces
Resistance such as a drag of the bed
What are examples of indications of glacial presence?
Corries, troughs, drumlins and moraines.
What are the two major types of glaciers?
Ice Sheets
Ice Caps
Ice Sheets
These are marked as ice domes exceeding 50,000km^2
Ice Caps
High-latitude regions of a planet covered in ice.
Ice Dome
Where mass is radially distributed outwards acting as dispsersal centres
What are the two types of stream flow from a glacier?
Outlet Glaciers
Ice Streams
Features of Outlet glaciers and Ice Streams?
Both rapidly moving, chanelled ice radiating from the interiors of the ice sheets.
Outlet Glaciers
These occupy troughs of valleys being valley glaciers draining an inland sheet/cap flowing through a gap in peripheral mountians.