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Glaciers
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.
Industry: Water bodies
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Glaciers
striations
Water bodies; Glaciers
Multiple, generally parallel, linear grooves, carved by rocks frozen in the bed of a glacier into the bedrock over which it flows.
crescentic gouge
Water bodies; Glaciers
Any curved mark or fracture produced by plucking or chipping of the glacier's bed. Larger than chatter marks, typically the horns of these gouges point up glacier.
debris cone
Water bodies; Glaciers
A cone or mound of debris-covered ice, with a thick enough sediment cover to protect the ice from melting.
neoglaciation
Water bodies; Glaciers
The most recent interval of temperate glacier expansion and advance on Earth. It began ~650 years ago and continued into the 20th century in many locations. Temperate glaciers in North America, South ...
esker
Water bodies; Glaciers
A meandering, water-deposited, generally steep-sided sediment ridge that forms within a subglacial or englacial stream channel. Its floor can be bedrock, sediment, or ice. Subsequent melting of the ...
distributary
Water bodies; Glaciers
A tongue of glacier ice that flows away from the main trunk of the glacier. This may result from differential melting changing the gradient of part of a glacier.
rock flour
Water bodies; Glaciers
Fine-grained, silt-size sediment formed by the mechanical erosion of bedrock at the base and sides of a glacier by moving ice. When it enters a stream, it turns the stream's color brown, gray, ...
