Download Chapter 15 Glaciers Vocabulary 15.1:

Chapter 15
Glaciers
Vocabulary 15.1:
Glacier:
Continental Glacier:
Valley Glacier:
Ice Cap:
15.1 What is a Glacier?
How does snow turn into a glacier?
Buried snow becomes compressed (packed down) and hardens. This process
continues and solid ice results.
Glaciers
Type
Where Exists
How Formed
Size
1. Valley
Mountain ranges
high enough to
have areas where
snowfall exceeds
snowmelt. In
other words,
where more snow
falls than melts.
In land areas of
polar regions.
Snow
accumulates in
valleys of
mountain range
and gradually
changes to ice.
From under 2 km
to 100 km long.
For millions o
years all
precipitation has
fallen as snow,
built up, and
changed to ice.
From under
500,000 km
squared to 13.7
km squared
2. Continental
Valley Glaciers
Moraines in steep valley glaciers
Continental Glaciers
15.2 Glacial Movement and Erosion
Vocabulary:
Crevasse:
Till:
Moraine:
Striations:
Glacial Valley:
1. Crevasse
A great fissure or crack that forms
across the width of a valley glacier
when it reaches a steep downward
slope.
2. Till
Unsorted and unstratified rock
material that a glacier deposits
3. Moraine
An accumulation of glacier till
4. Striations
Long parallel scratches in rock that
show the general direction of glacial
movement.
Glacier Crevasse
Glacier Till
GLACIER MORAINE
GLACIER STRIATIONS
These striations are on rocks in
the Indian Peaks Wilderness,
Utah. They were formed as
individual particles carried at
the base of a glacier moved
across the bedrock and
scratched the rock. The
striations provide important
clues to the orientation of ice
flow, particularly important if
we were not around to observe
the glacier when it existed. In
this case, the glacier flowed
from the bottom right to the
upper left of the