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A jagged, narrow ridge that separates two adjacent glacier valleys or cirques. The ridge frequently resembles the blade of a serrated knife. A French term referring to the bones in a fish backbone. |
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The process by which pieces of ice break away from 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, the pieces are called icebergs. |
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| 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 circus. |
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continental glacier [image] |
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A continental glacier is a huge mass of ice that covers a large area of land near the Arctic or Antarctic polar regions. |
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| A crack in a glacier caused by rapid extension |
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An elongated ridge of glacial sediment sculpted by ice moving over the bed of a glacier. The shape is often compared to an inverted, blunt-ended canoe. Generally, the down-glacier end is oval or rounded and the up-glacier end tapers. |
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| A rock of unspecified shape and size, transported a significant distance from its origin by a glacier or iceberg and deposited by melting of the ice. |
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| A meandering, water-deposited, generally steep-sided sediment ridge that forms within a subglacial stream channel |
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| An intermediate stage in the transformation of snow to glacier ice. Snow becomes firn when it has been compressed so that no pore space remains between flakes or crystals, a process that takes less than a year. |
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| Glaciers are classified by their size, location, and thermal regime. |
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Steep-sided, flat-bottomed valley formed by a glacier. A U-shaped valley. |
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| A pointed, mountain peak, typically pyramidal in shape, bounded by the walls of three or more cirques. |
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An ice cap is a large mass of ice that originates on land by compaction and recrystallization of snow. Ice caps flow outwards in several directions and cover most or all features of underlying land. |
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An ice front is the place where a glacier thins and ends. The ice front's position changes as the glacier moves or melts |
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| An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km². |
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| A sand and gravel deposit formed by running water on stagnant or moving-glacier ice. |
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| A depression that forms in an outwash plain by the melting of a block of glacier ice that was separated from the retreating glacier and was subsequently buried by glacier sedimentation. As the buried ice melts, the depression enlarges |
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A general term for unstratified and unsorted deposits of sediment that form through the direct action of, or contact with, glacier ice. |
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A mountain peak or ridge that pokes through the surface of an Ice Field or a Glacier. |
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Glacially eroded, sorted sediment that has been transported by meltwater. Typically, the sediment becomes finer grained with increasing distance from the glacier terminus. |
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A broad, low-slope angle alluvial plain composed of outwash that has been transported by meltwater. The alluvial plain begins at the foot of a glacier and may extend for miles. |
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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, iridescent blue-green, or milky white. Also called Glacier Flour or Glacier Milk. |
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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. Sometimes called rock drumlins.
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A term generally used to refer to the elevation of the lower edge of a snow field. It is not truly a line but rather an irregular, commonly patchy border zone. The higher the latitude or altitude, the lower the snowline. |
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| Multiple, generally parallel, linear grooves, carved by rocks frozen in the bed of a glacier into the bedrock over which it flows. |
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An unsorted and unstratified accumulation of glacial sediment, deposited directly by glacier ice. |
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| Commonly originating from mountain glaciers or ice fields, these glaciers spill down valleys, looking much like giant tongues. |
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