GEOSC 010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 18: Till, Glacier Morphology, Moraine
Document Summary
A glacier is a thick mass of ice formed over thousands of years. Valley glaciers or alpine glaciers are in mountain valleys and they advance slowly. Ice sheets exist on a much larger scale. They are in polar regions and extend over large areas of land. Sea ice is frozen seawater that covers the artic ocean. Ice shelves are glacial ice flows into the ocean. Ice shelve are sea ice but are attached by at least one side to land. The ice shelf floats and as it melts rocks called dropstones fall to the ocean floor. Upland and plateau areas covered by ice are called ice caps. They bury the terrain underneath but are smaller than ice sheets. Often outlet glaciers or extensions of larger ice masses or glaciers are fed by melting ice caps or ice sheets. Piedmont glaciers are found in lowlands of steep mountains as lobes of a more broad glacier.
