Glacial Erosion and Depositional Features How Do Glaciers Affect the Landscape?

Glacial Erosion Glaciers remove loose rock from the valleys The flowing glacier pries rocks loose and incorporates them into the ice

Glacial Striations CL Rocks scrape the underlying bedrock This picture was taken near Squamish 1997

Valley Shape Glaciers will carve out a U shaped valley

Fjords and Inlets CL Sognefjord, Norway A fjord is a U shaped valley filled in with water. In B.C. we call a fjord an inlet

Erosional Features At the top of an alpine glacier a semicircular basin is carved out called a cirque When two cirques form on a peak the ridge separating them is called an arête Three or more cirques on a mountain can carve out a horn

The glacier erodes

After the glacier melts

The Matterhorn In the Swiss alps

Glacier at work A Swiss glacier is eroding the mountain. CL

Swiss Alps are glacially sculpted CL

Glacial Deposits Glaciers pick up everything in its path, even the largest boulders. Large amounts of sediment can be carried large distances by glaciers. Glacial deposit is called till.

Erratics Erratics are large boulders carried and then deposited by a glacier. It marks the furthest extent of the glacier. Near 12th Avenue and 200th Street, Surrey.

Glacial Erratics CL Estonia, Gulf of Finland. These rocks were carried and deposited by glaciers from Finland to Estonia

Glacial Erratics CL Burnaby Mountain Park

Moraines A moraine is a mound or ridge of till deposited by a glacier The different places along a glacier’s advance will result in the different types of moraines

Moraine dams the lake CL

Moraine Lake Banff National Park CL Banff National Park The haze is from the forest fires of 2003

CL Peyto Lake Bluest lake in the Rockies. The glacial till causes the light to be scattered leaving the lake very blue.

End Moraine End moraine of the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska. Note the poorly sorted sediment; The boulders are several meters in diameter.

Formation of end moraine The terminus of a glacier may remain stationary for years. The sediment piles up in a ridge called an end moraine. If this marks the furthest extent of the glacier it is a terminal moraine.

Retreating Glacier End moraine

The retreating Athabasca Glacier CL Jasper National Park, Alberta

On the Athabasca Glacier Glaciers are full of dirt, and there are crevasses.

Lateral Moraine Lateral moraines are accumulations of sediment on the margins of glaciers.  Rock slides, rock falls, snow avalanches and other forms of mass wasting are especially efficient at loading the margins of the glacier with this material. 

Formation of a Medial Moraine The medial moraine forms where two tributary glaciers meet, and their adjacent lateral moraines merge to form the medial moraine.

Kennicott Glacier, Alaska.

Medial Moraine Switzerland, Aletsch Glacier in the Bernese Oberland At least how many tributary glaciers must there be to create this formation? Three, because there are two medial moraines CL