TABLE 3.4.

Landforms and Materials Arising Out of

Glacial Activity.

Glacial Deposits

Stratified

Unstratified

Outwash Deposits

Basal Till

Varved Clay

Ablation Till

Deltaic Deposits

Lateral Moraine

Esker Deposits

Medial Moraine

Cravasse Deposits

Terminal Moraine

Kame Deposits

Ground Moraine

Kettle Deposits

Drumlin

Many of the important groundwater quality and quantity problems are located in the

northeastern United States and the Upper Midwest. Inasmuch as the relevant aquifers in

these areas are often made up of materials deposited by the glaciers, it is important to

understand the basic mechanisms at work in glaciation and the nature of the resulting

geologic deposits.

The deposits formed via glacial action can be classified as stratified and unstratified.

Table 3.4 shows the cataloging protocol we will use in the following sections.

Unstratified Deposits The material scraped from the earth’s surface by the glacier

and later directly deposited in various landforms (without transport by water) is called

till. Till is very unusual inasmuch as it typically exhibits no grain size sorting. In other

words, mechanical analyses would show a wide distribution of grain sizes. The resulting

deposits are therefore poorly sorted and well graded.

The poor sorting is due to the fact that there is no mechanism for sorting the materials

as there is in water-transported or wind-transported materials. As a consequence,

in the same sample of till, one might find every grain size from clay to boulder. In

Figure 3.11 we see where two valley glaciers converge. Each of the two valley glaciers

has lateral moraines upstream of their confluence. After the glaciers merge, two of the

lateral moraines combine to form a medial moraine. We will discuss moraines in more

detail shortly.

In Figure 3.12 we see till being deposited at the toe of the Tasman glacier in New

Zealand. The glacier at this point consists of a mixture of glacial ice and crushed rock

fragments. All grain sizes are represented and the individual rock fragments do not,

in general, exhibit the rounding effects identified with water-transported materials. The

pool shown in this figure consists of glacial meltwater attributable to the melting ice.

Rock dust is held in suspension in this water, making it, for all practical purposes,

undrinkable. On the top of the ice is found the ablation till, which we will discuss

momentarily.

The composition of the till, both mineralogically and in terms of grain size, depends

on the source of the material that was available to the glacier as it flowed under gravity

from its source area to its furthest extent. For example, glacial ice moving through the

Great Lakes basins tended to erode fine-grained materials. As one would expect, this

generated a till that exhibits an abundance of clay-sized particles.