21 Terms
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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
glacial stream
Water bodies; Glaciers
A channelized accumulation of liquid water on (supraglacial), in (englacial), or under (subglacial) a glacier, moving under the influence of gravity.
kame
Water bodies; Glaciers
A sand and gravel deposit formed by running water on stagnant or moving-glacier ice. Crevasse fills or crevasse ridges form within crevasses. Kames form on flat or inclined ice, in holes, or in ...
fountain
Water bodies; Glaciers
A glacial spring, generally discharging supercooled water with a significant hydrostatic head.
cirque
Water bodies; Glaciers
A bowl-shaped, amphitheater-like depression eroded into the head or the side of a glacier valley. Typically, a cirque has a lip at its lower end. The term is French and is derived from the Latin word ...
glacier ice
Water bodies; Glaciers
A mono-mineralic type of rock, composed of crystals of the mineral ice, formed through metamorphism of snowflakes. Metamorphism results in recrystallization, increased density, and the growth of ...
varve
Water bodies; Glaciers
A varve is a pair of sedimentary layers, a couplet, that form in an annual cycle as the result of seasonal weather changes. Typically formed in glacial lakes a varve couplet consists of a coarser ...
till
Water bodies; Glaciers
An unsorted and unstratified accumulation of glacial sediment, deposited directly by glacier ice. Till is a heterogeneous mixture of different sized material deposited by moving ice (lodgement till) ...
