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Erosional landforms. As the glaciers expand, due to their accumulating weight of snow and ice they crush, abrade, and scour surfaces such as rocks and bedrock.The resulting erosional landforms include striations, cirques, glacial horns, arêtes, trim lines, U-shaped valleys, roches moutonnées, overdeepenings and hanging valleys.
Zone of plucking in the formation of tarns and cirques Glacially-plucked granitic bedrock near Mariehamn, Åland. Plucking, also referred to as quarrying, is a glacial phenomenon that is responsible for the weathering and erosion of pieces of bedrock, especially large "joint blocks".
Because ice can flow faster where it is thicker, the rate of glacier-induced erosion is directly proportional to the thickness of overlying ice. Consequently, pre-glacial low hollows will be deepened and pre-existing topography will be amplified by glacial action, while nunataks , which protrude above ice sheets, barely erode at all – erosion ...
As the ice melts and retreats, the valley is left with very steep sides and a wide, flat floor. This parabolic shape is caused by glacial erosion removing the contact surfaces with greatest resistance to flow, and the resulting section minimises friction. [4] There are two main variations of this U-shape.
Eskers form in ice tunnels within or under a glacier, as shown in Figure 1, and are composed of the sediment deposits from the streams that occupy these tunnels. [37] Eskers may also form from supra-glacial streams that cut into the crevasses of the glacier. After the ice has melted away the stream deposits are left remaining as long mounded ...
Syngenetic ice wedges may only form if the thermal contraction and subsequent ice-veinlet growth can keep pace with the addition of new material. If this is the case, the ice wedge can reach depths of 25 meters, but the average is much less. [6] In a syngenetic ice wedge, the age of the ice on the periphery decreases upwards.
[4] [5] Should ice segregation, plucking and abrasion continue, the dimensions of the cirque will increase, but the proportion of the landform would remain roughly the same. A bergschrund forms when the movement of the glacier separates the moving ice from the stationary ice, forming a crevasse. The method of erosion of the headwall lying ...
Multiple erratics on the terminal moraine of the Okanogan Lobe. The Cascade Mountains are in the background.. The term "erratic" is commonly used to refer to erratic blocks, which geologist Archibald Geikie describes as: "large masses of rock, often as big as a house, that have been transported by glacier ice, and have been lodged in a prominent position in the glacier valleys or have been ...