Glacier Vocabulary

Cracks in glaciers.

The most common type of glacier; flows like rivers in high mountain areas.

Gigantic glaciers. The only two current ones are Antarctica and Greenland.

Glaciers occupying broad lowlands at the base of mountains.

Part of a glacier where more snow falls each winter than melts in the summer; the top end of the glacier.

Part of a glacier where less snow falls each winter than melts in the summer; the bottom end of the glacier.

Loss of ice and snow in a glacier.

Ice breaking off of a glacier (in the water, this forms icebergs)

A glacier flowing over fractured bedrock, loosening and lifting rock, incorporating it into the ice.

A flowing glacier acting like sandpaper.

Pulverized rock produced by glacial abrasion.

Long scratches or grooves caused by glaciers dragging rocks over bedrock.

When glacial erosion in the main valley is greater than in a tributary, the tributary can enter the main valley well above the main valley floor. The tributary is then called a . . .

A bowl-shaped depression at the top of a glacial valley, with steep walls on three sides.

A small lake in a cirque after a glacier has melted away.

Sinuous, sharp-edged ridges between two glacial flows.

Sharp, pyramid-like peaks created by several cirques around a single high mountain.

A glacial valley submerged by the ocean.

The general term for sediments of glacial origin.

Sediment deposited as glacial ice melts and drops its load. (Not sorted by size.)

Sediment deposited by glacial melt-water. (Sorted by size.)

A ridge of till left by a glacier.

Ridges of till along the sides of a glacial valley.

A single stripe of debris deposited away from the valley wall after two valley glaciers coalesce, combining the debris at their edges.