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Geomorphology Lecture: 5 Notes part 2
Landforms by Glaciers
Glaciers

• Glaciers are large masses of moving ice.

• Formed by the accumulation and compaction of recrystallized melted snow.
• The places where the snow lies for the whole year are called snowfields. The imaginary line above which
there is a permanent snowfield is known as the snow line. The snowfields are always situated above the snow
line.

High latitude polar environments

• Ice sheets or “continental glaciers”

High altitude mountain environments

• Alpine glaciers or “valley glaciers”

• Glacial processes produce a combination of constructive and destructive glacial landforms.

Action of glaciers
The glacier performs three actions namely erosion, transportation and deposition. A glacier erodes its bedrock by the
action of
1. Plucking
2. Abrasion

Plucking
The glacier plucks big pieces of rocks from the valley floor and creates large grooves or hollows. These pieces are
dragged along the valley floor as the glacier moves. The boulders and rocky floor are grounded by mutual contact.
Abrasion
Pure ice is capable of wearing down massive rocks when equipped with angular rock fragments. The glacier can
groove, scratch, and chisel the rock surface. It has a powerful abrasive effect.

Ice sheets

• An ice sheet is a mass of glacial ice more than 50,000 square kilometers.
• Long periods of extremely low temperatures
• Antarctica and Greenland almost completely covered by ice sheets.

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• An ice cap is a glacier, a thick layer of ice and snow, that covers fewer than 50,000 square kilometers (19,000
square miles).
• An interconnected series of ice caps and glaciers is called an ice field.

Ice Shelves, Tidal Glaciers

• Tidal glaciers, Ice Shelves are the portion of either alpine or continental glaciers which extend out into
saltwater.
• Calving of glacial ice produces icebergs.
• Calving often occurs along crevasses or cracks in the ice but can also fail from a combination of melting and
gravitational pull.
• Melting icebergs will produce ice rafted sediments.

Alpine glaciers

• Long, linear glaciers that occupyhigh altitude mountain valleys,

• Flow down valley and increase in size as they accumulate and
absorb smaller tributary glaciers from the mountainous terrain.
• Found throughout the world: Rockies, Andes, and Himalayas.
• High-latitude, polar or arctic mountains, such as those in
Alaska.

Erosional Landforms

The landforms created by glaciers are mainly found in the

mountainous regions.

U-Shaped Valley U-Shaped Valley is a typical glacial feature.

Since glacial mass is heavy and slow moving, erosional
activity is uniform in all directions. A steep-sided curved
bottom valley has a U shaped profile.

Hanging Valley Hanging valley is formed when tributary

glaciers are unable to cut as deeply as main ones and remain
“hanging” at higher levels than the main valley as discordant
tributaries. These tributary valleys appear hanging over the
main valley and enter the main valley at some height.

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Cirque and Tarn A Cirque or Corrie is an amphitheatre shaped hollow basin cut into a mountain ridge. It has a steep-
sided slope on three sides, an open end on one side and a flat bottom. When the ice melts, the Cirque may develop into
a Tarn Lake and the whole thing appears like a big armchair.

Aretes It is a steep-sided, sharp-tipped saw toothed ridges

which have undergone glacial erosion from two sides.
These comb like ridges are called as arete.

Horn If the summit of the Arete is roughly inclined, it

gives rise to pyramidal peaks which are known as horns.
Example, Matterhorn of Alps-Switzerland.

Cols form when two cirque basins on opposite sides of the

mountain erode the arête dividing them. Cols create
saddles or passes over the mountain.

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Roche Moutonnee or Sheep Rock Roche Moutonnee or sheep rock is a glaciated bedrock surface, usually in the
form of rounded knobs. The upstream side of a Roche moutonnee has been subjected to glacial scouring that has
produced a gentle, polished, and striated slope and the downstream side has been subjected to glacial plucking that has
resulted in a steep, irregular and jagged slope.

Nunataks A rock mass surrounded by ice is called Nunatak. It stands out as an island in the ice

Fjord The fjord is formed as a steep-sided narrow entrance like feature at the coast of a glaciated region where the
stream meets the coast. Fjords are common in Norway, Greenland and Newzealand.

Depositional landforms of glaciers

1. Moraine
• Moraines are accumulations of dirt and
rocks that have fallen onto the glacier
surface or have been pushed along by the
glacier as it moves.
• The dirt and rocks composing moraines
can range in size from powdery silt to
large rocks and boulders.
• A receding glacier can leave behind
moraines that are visible long after the
glacier retreats.
1. Ground moraine = Deposited beneath glaciers,
widespread beneath continental glaciers, very
poorly drained area with many closed depressions.

2. End or terminal moraine = Deposited as a

ridge along the edge of a stationary glacier.

3. Lateral moraine = Valley-side debris accumulated along the sides of a mountain valley glacier.

4. Medial moraine = Formed by the confluence of two lateral moraines as tributary mountain glaciers merge.

2. Outwash Plain
When the glacier reaches its lowest point and melts, it leaves behind a layered deposition of rock debris, clay, sand,
gravel, etc. This layered surface is called as an Outwash Plain.

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3. Esker

It is a winding ridge of depositions of rock, gravel,

clay, etc, running along a glacier in an outwash plain.
The Eskers resemble the feature of an embankment
and are often used for laying roads.

4. Drumlins
• Drumlins are long, linear hills of glacial till
deposited by ice sheets.
• Similar to medial and lateral moraines, smaller,
irregular shaped
• Drumlin fields are areas with numerous drumlins.

5. Kames
kame, mound like hill of poorly sorted drift, mostly
sand and gravel, deposited at or near the terminus of a
glacier. A kame may be produced either as a delta of a
meltwater stream or as an accumulation of debris let down onto the ground surface by the melting glacier.

6. Kettle topography
• Small depressions in the landscape, often filled with water post
glaciation
• Large blocks of ice are left by a retreating glacier
• Outwash sediments deposited around the blocks, possible
burial
• Ice block melts, only a void or kettle remains.
• Subsidence and melting can deepen the kettle.
• Kettle lakes are sourced by rainfall or snowmelt.

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7. Crag and tail

• When a more resistant rock persists in the passage of glaciers, the upstream side is smoothened by abrasion and
it's downstream side is roughened & steepened by plucking called Roche moutonnee.
• A tadpole-shaped landform developed by glacial erosion of rocks on unequal resistance.
• It is a larger rock mass than a Roche moutonnee.

8. Paternoster Lakes

• Connected string of small, circular lakes that occur in relict glacial valleys.
• Post glacial erosional features filled with rainwater or glacial meltwater.

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