Table of Contents
What features do valley glaciers create through erosion?
Valley glaciers form several unique features through erosion, including cirques, arêtes, and horns. Glaciers deposit their sediment when they melt. Landforms deposited by glaciers include drumlins, kettle lakes, and eskers.
What features are typically produced by Alpine glaciation?
LANDFORMS MADE BY ALPINE GLACIERS Figure 17.7 shows how alpine glaciers erode mountain masses to create landforms such as aretes, horns, cols, moraines, tarns, hanging valleys, and glacial troughs.
What are 2 erosional effects of glaciation in Canada?
Valleys were widened, moraines were sculpted and bedrock was smoothed. Glaciation also left behind many sediments, including gravel, which is important to Canada’s export economy.
What do Alpine glaciers create?
Alpine glaciers pluck and grind up rocks creating distinctive U-shaped valleys and sharp mountain peaks and ridges. A cirque is a bowl-shaped hollow found high up on the side of a mountain. that is left between two adjacent glaciers.
How do Alpine glaciers accomplish erosion?
Glaciers cause erosion in two main ways: plucking and abrasion. Plucking is the process by which rocks and other sediments are picked up by a glacier. They freeze to the bottom of the glacier and are carried away by the flowing ice. Abrasion is the process in which a glacier scrapes underlying rock.
How do alpine glaciers accomplish erosion?
How does an Alpine glacier modify the valley through which it moves?
Alpine glaciers form on mountainsides and move downward through valleys. Sometimes, alpine glaciers create or deepen valleys by pushing dirt, soil, and other materials out of their way.
How does an Alpine glacier modify the valley?
Alpine glaciers create valleys by pushing soil and rocks out of their way as they grow. They are also known as valley or mountain glaciers. Ice sheets used to cover most of North America and Europe during the last ice age.
What is an example of erosion in Canada?
Among the classic examples of major gravitational erosion in Canada are the FRANK SLIDE in Alberta (1903), and the Hope Slide in BC (1965), and numerous quick clay slides in the old marine deposits of the CHAMPLAIN SEA in the St Lawrence Valley (seeLANDSLIDE).
What are the erosional processes associated with glaciation?
Processes of Glacial Erosion Glacial erosion involves the removal and transport of bedrock or sediment by three main processes: quarrying (also known as plucking), abrasion, and melt water erosion.
How do glaciers cause erosion?
As glaciers spread out over the surface of the land, (grow), they can change the shape of the land. They scrape away at the surface of the land, erode rock and sediment, carry it from one place to another, and leave it somewhere else. Thus, glaciers cause both erosional and depositional landforms.
What do alpine glaciers do?
What shape valley do alpine glaciers make as they erode mountains?
Cirques are created when glaciers erode the mountainside, scouring into it and creating rounded hollows with steep uphill faces, shaped like tilted bowls. A cirque is often more visible after the glacier melts away and leaves the bowl-shaped landform behind.
Where has erosion occurred in Canada?
What is an example of glacier erosion?
Glacial lakes are examples of ice erosion. They occur when a glacier carves its way into a place and then melts over time, filling up the space that it carved out with water. One such glacial lake is called Lake Louise and is located in Alberta, Canada.
Which is created by erosion glaciers?
How are valley glaciers involved in erosion and deposition?
They form in mountains and flow through mountain river valleys. Glaciers cause erosion by plucking and abrasion. Glaciers deposit their sediment when they melt. Landforms deposited by glaciers include drumlins, kettle lakes, and eskers.
What is glacial erosional landform?
As the glaciers expand, due to their accumulating weight of snow and ice they crush and 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.
What is created by glacial erosion?
Glaciers carve a set of distinctive, steep-walled, flat-bottomed valleys. U-shaped valleys, fjords, and hanging valleys are examples of the kinds of valleys glaciers can erode.
What type of topography do alpine glaciers have?
Alpine Glacial Erosion Features Alpine glaciers produce very different topography than continental glaciers. Alpine glaciers produce wide valleys with relatively flat bottoms and steep sides due to the erosion that occurs at the base and edges of the glaciers. These are known as U-shaped valleys (Figure 17.17).
What causes glacial erosion to occur?
Glacial erosion is primarily driven by abrasion of the underlying rocks by rock fragments embedded within the ice. These rocks are pushed down onto the underlying surfaces by the ice, and because they are hard they can gouge and grind down the materials beneath the glacier.
What are the characteristics of glacial deposits?
Glacial deposits have created distinctive topographic features on the landscapes in these regions — such as drumlins, eskers, and moraines (Figure 17.16). These continental glacial features are deposits of glacial materials and are described further in Section 17.3.
What happens when a glacier moves over irregular topography?
As the glacier move over irregular topography, the brittle upper layer or zone of fracture is subject to tension and crack above the ductile layer. At the base of a glacier, the ice moves by ______.