Unit Five - Weathering and Erosion - Glaciers

Question 1

What is a glacier?

Answer 1

A mass of ice and snow that moves downhill under the force of gravity.

Question 2

How does a glacier move?

Answer 2

1. Snow and Ice accumulates
2. The glacier moves downhill under its own mass and gravity
3. Acts like a fluid and flows in motion (Called “River of Ice”)

Question 3

What is a Continental Glacier?

Answer 3

1. Huge sheets of ice
2. Covers entire land masses

Question 4

What is a Valley Glacier?

Answer 4

1. Form in high elevations
2. In mountain valleys.

Question 5

What are U - Shaped Valleys?

Answer 5

1. An identifiable glacial feature
2. U - Shaped = Glacial Erosion (Lateral)
3. V - Shape = Water Erosion (Vertical)

Question 6

What are Erratics?

Answer 6

1. An identifiable glacial feature
2. Large DEPOSITED fragments
3. Transported from a glacier
4. Doesn’t fit with rest of the environment

Ex: A boulder of sandstone is picked up by a glacier, transported, and deposited on top of a limestone bedrock

Question 7

What are Drumlins?

Answer 7

An identifiable glacial feature

1. An elongated hill
2. A mound of unsorted sediments
3. It is formed when there is a resistant rock, forcing the glacier to drive over it, then it smoothes the rock, creating the “tail end”
4. Aligned in the direction of ice flow
5. Where the “tail end” is pointing, that is where the glacier moved.

Question 8

What are Eskers?

Answer 8

1. Identifiable Glacial Feature
2. Long winding ridge
3. Made up of sands and gravel
4. Remnant of the melting of an under glacier

Question 9

What are Terminal Moraines?

Answer 9

1. An identifiable glacial feature
2. A deposited mound of till that is pushed
3. Along the leading edge of a glacier
4. sediment is unsorted.

It is basically unsorted sediments that are pushed from the leading edge of a glacier, and that glacier later recedes, keeping the pushed sediments in the same place

Question 10

What are glacial grooves?

Answer 10

1. An Identifiable Glacial Feature
2. Long parallel scratches
3. Formed by sediment embedded in a glacier

Question 11

What is a Kettle Lake?

Answer 11

An Identifiable Glacial Feature.

1. A piece of ice falls from a glacier
2. It gets partially buried and sediment surrounds it
3. The ice melts
4. This creates a depression in the ground
5. Water line increases, creating a lake

Question 12

What is an outwash plain?

Answer 12

An Identifiable Glacial Feature

When running water that melted from a retreating glacier sorts sediments in the outwash plain.