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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.

Contributors in Glaciers

Glaciers

ablation till

Water bodies; Glaciers

An irregular-shaped layer or pile of glacier sediment formed by the melting of a block of stagnant ice. Ultimately, ablationa moraine is deposited on the former bed of the glacier.

Glacier

Water bodies; Glaciers

A large persistent body of ice. Originating on land, a glacier flows slowly due to stresses induced by its weight. A glacier forms in a location where the accumulation of snow and sleet exceeds the ...

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) ...

Ablation moraine

Water bodies; Glaciers

An irregular-shaped layer or pile of glacier sediment formed by the melting of a block of stagnant ice. Ultimately, ablationa moraine is deposited on the former bed of the glacier.

Barren zone

Water bodies; Glaciers

An area of fresh, vegetation-free bedrock around the margin of a retreating glacier that documents the recent loss of ice.

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