20 Terms
Home > Industry/Domain > Water bodies > Glaciers
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
Add a new termContributors in Glaciers
Glaciers
Remnant
Water bodies; Glaciers
An isolated melting mass of glacier ice, that has become detached from its source and the remainder of the glacier. Some remnants cover many square miles.
Eustacy
Water bodies; Glaciers
Fluctuations in the worldwide sea-level regime caused by changes in the quantity of seawater available. The greatest changes are caused by water being added to, or removed from, glaciers.
Accumulation
Water bodies; Glaciers
The addition of ice and snow into a glacier system. This occurs through a variety of processes including precipitation, firnification, and wind transportation of snow into a glacier basin from an ...
Hanging valley
Water bodies; Glaciers
A former tributary glacier valley that is incised into the upper part of a U-shaped glacier valley, higher than the floor of the main valley. Hanging valley streams often enter the main valley as ...
Foliation
Water bodies; Glaciers
The layering or banding that develops in a glacier during the process of transformation of snow to glacier ice. Individual layers, called folia, are visible because of differences in crystal or grain ...
Medial moraine
Water bodies; Glaciers
A sediment ridge, located on a glacier's exposed ice surface, away from its valley walls, extending down glacier to the terminus. It forms by the joining of two lateral moraines when two glaciers ...
Bergschrund
Water bodies; Glaciers
A single large crevasse or series of sub-parallel crevasses that develop at the head of a glacier. The location where ice pulls away from the bedrock wall of the cirque against which it accumulated. ...
Featured User
Featured blossaries
HalimRosyid
0
Terms
12
Blossaries
0
Followers
ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM
Category: Entertainment 2 20 Terms
20 Terms
KSGRAM
0
Terms
9
Blossaries
1
Followers
Greek Landscape: Rivers and Lakes
Category: Geography 1 20 Terms
20 Terms