Glacial Erosion and Depositional Features

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

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

3. Glacial Striations • Rocks scrape the underlying bedrock • This picture was taken near Squamish 1997

4. Valley Shape • Glaciers will carve out a U shaped valley

5. Fjords and Inlets Sognefjord, Norway • A fjord is a U shaped valley filled in with water. It’s also called an inlet.

6. 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

7. The glacier erodes

8. After the glacier melts

9. The Matterhorn In the Swiss alps

10. Glacier at work • A Swiss glacier is eroding the mountain.

11. Swiss Alps are glacially sculpted

12. 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.

13. 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.

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

15. Glacial Erratics • Burnaby Mountain Park

16. 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

17. Moraine dams the lake CL

18. Moraine Lake • Banff National Park • The haze is from the forest fires of 2003

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

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

21. 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.

22. Retreating Glacier End moraine

23. The retreating Athabasca Glacier Jasper National Park, Alberta

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

25. 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. 

26. 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.

27. Kennicott Glacier, Alaska.

28. 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