20 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
stagnation
Water bodies; Glaciers
The in-situ melting of glacier ice. Many glaciers have stagnant termini, covered by thick sediment debris. Some support vegetation, including mature forests.
roche moutonnee
Water bodies; Glaciers
An elongated, rounded, asymmetrical, bedrock knob produced by glacier erosion. It has a gentle slope on its up-glacier side and a steep- to vertical-face on the down-glacier side.
glacier
Water bodies; Glaciers
A large, perennial accumulation of ice, snow, rock, sediment and liquid water originating on land and moving down slope under the influence of its own weight and gravity; a dynamic river of ice. ...
accumulation
Water bodies; Glaciers
The addition of ice and snow into a glacier system. This occurs through a variety of processes including precipitation, firnification, and wind transportation of snow into a glacier basin from an ...
pleistocene
Water bodies; Glaciers
The epoch of geologic time, informally called the 'The Great Ice Age' or the 'Glacial Epoch', that began ~1.8 million years ago and ended ~8,000 years ago (see the CVO's Geologic Time Scale). During ...
calving
Water bodies; Glaciers
The process by which pieces of ice break away from the terminus of a glacier that ends in a body of water or from the edge of a floating ice shelf that ends in the ocean. Once they enter the water, ...
recessional moraine
Water bodies; Glaciers
A ridge of glacial sediment that forms when the terminus of a retreating glacier remains at or near a single location for a period of time sufficient for a cross-valley accumulation to form.
