GLACIERS Glaciers are large, long-lasting

mass of ice, formed on land

that moves under the
influence of gravity
and its weight

• Glaciers develop as snow is compacted and

recrystallized, first into firn and then glacial
ice

Alpine – confined by surrounding mountains and

formed in high elevations

Continental – form in polar regions

CONTINENTAL

-Ice cup/Mountain Glaciers

-Ice Sheet When will a glacier form?

• A glacier can only form where more snow

accumulates during the winter than melts
ALPINE
away during the spring and summer
Outlet - They are the beginning of what usually
becomes valley glaciers.

Valley -

Tidewater - These glaciers calve ice as they surge

forward, creating icebergs.

Hanging - hanging glaciers flow down a mountainside

but stop abruptly, usually at a cliff. They then calve or
feed valley glaciers through avalanches and ice falls.

Piedmont
GLACIERS BUDGET
Cirque - When the glaciers build up and shift, they
erode the depression to form bowl-shaped valleys
called corries or (you guessed it) cirques. Sometimes
If a glacier has a positive budget meaning it gains
cirque glaciers will accumulate enough ice to spill over
more snow than it loses, it is advancing.
and form valley glaciers.
If a glacier has a negative budget, the terminus of the
Rock - All glaciers have some amount of rock, soil and
glacier shrinks back upslope.
other debris built up within or around it.Typically, rock
glaciers look more like a dense mudslide than a Glacial budget refers to the balance between the
glacier. amount inputs versus outputs affecting the glacial
system.
Note that a glacier is a river. Even if the terminus
doesn’t advance, still flows
Snow is added in the zone of accumulation, whereas
melting/calving occurs in the zone of ablation
Equilibrium line separates the two zones, will
advance or retreat depending on climate
Crevasses – a deep open crack.
EQUILIBRIUM LINE/FIRN LINE ZONE
The arrow in this photo actually points out the firn
line. However, as the photo was taken near the end of
the ablation season, the firn line more-or-less
coincides with the equilibrium line.
THE LINE THAT MEETS THE TWO ZONES.
Firn - a compacted granular snow that is intermediate
state between snow and glacial ice.
How do glaciers move?
Internal deformation Ice crystals slide past one
another it has different directions.
Basal Sliding Entire glacier slides downhill on a thin
film of meltwater at its base.
Due to friction, glacier flow is fastest at the top center
of a glacier and slowest along its margins
Unlocking of word:
Mechanics – motion and forces producing motion
Ice crystals slide past one another.
Entire glacier slides downhill on a thin film of
meltwater at its base.
REMNANTS OF GLACIERS
Abrasion
Rocks embedded in glacier’s base make linear
scratches and grooves in bedrock
Example of remnants:
Roche Moutonee - It is a rock formation created by
the passing of a glacier.
Plucking is when melt water from a glacier freezes
around lumps of cracked and broken rock. When the
ice moves downhill, rock is plucked from the back
wall. But, Abrasion is when rock frozen to the base
and the back of the glacier scrapes the bed rock.
Freeze-thaw is when melt water or rain gets into
cracks in the bed rock, usually the back wall. At night
the water freezes, expands and causes the crack to
get larger. Eventually the rock will break away.
Alpine glaciers are found high in mountain valleys,
above the snow-line.
  Often accumulates in glacier’s channel
and at its terminus as a Moraine:

- Terminal Moraine: hills of sediment left by a

glacier’s retreat. It may be reshaped by a later glacial
advance into Drumlins: rounded elongated hills
perpendicular to their original orientation

ALPINE GLACIAL EROSION

SORTED

 Outwash: sorted stratified sediments

deposited by meltwater streams

 Loess: wind erosion of drying outwash silt.

 Eskers: sinuous meltwater deposits of sand

and gravel underneath ice

ADVANCE AND RETREAT: MORAINES

Horns: pointy peaks made by trios

Arêtes: long separated ridges by pairs

Cols: lowest point on a Mountain ridge

Cirques: horseshoe Shape basins

Melting forms cirque lake (tarn)

The Mother of All Cirques, Mount Everest

LATERAL AND MEDIAL MORAINES

CONTINENTAL GLACIAL EROSION

Erosional Landforms much larger in scale than alpine

glaciers

Finger Lakes, Great Lakes, Puget Sound, Loch Ness

were all once stream valleys excavated by Ice Sheets

Drumlins

GLACIAL DRIFT

UNSORTED

 Unstratified sediments deposited by THE ORIGIN OF DRUMLINS

melting ice.

 May contain glacial erratics.