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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
Icefall
Water bodies; Glaciers
Part of a glacier where the ice flows over a bed with a very steep gradient, typically at a higher rate than both above and below. As a result the surface is fractured and heavily crevassed. In a ...
Ice shelf
Water bodies; Glaciers
The floating terminus of a glacier, typically formed when a terrestrial glacier flow into a deep water basin, such as in Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic.
Tarn
Water bodies; Glaciers
A lake that develops in the basin of a cirque, generally after the melting of the glacier.
Nunatak
Water bodies; Glaciers
A mountain peak or ridge that pokes through the surface of an ice field or a glacier. It may separate adjacent valley glaciers (Greenlandic).
Erratic
Water bodies; Glaciers
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. Erratics range from pebble-size to larger than a ...
Ground moraine
Water bodies; Glaciers
A blanket of glacier till deposited on all of the surfaces over which a glacier moves, typically by moving ice.
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