Discuss some landforms created as a result of glacial movements

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: A glacier is a large mass of flowing, perennial ice. It is like a conveyor belt; it picks up and carries eroded material where ice accumulates and begins to flow, and where the glacier begins to melt it deposits material. The accumulation area is the erosion site, because ice is eroding the land by moving material, and the ablation area is the deposition site. Glacial deposits play an especially important role in shaping landforms in places with rapid melting because large quantities of material are dropped in these places, forming moraines.

Till: Much of the north-central United States is actually overlain by ice-deposited material called till.

Terminal Moraines: Terminal moraines tend to be found at the place of maximum ice extent , where we find accumulations of ice-borne material. Some of these are quite large; in fact, Long Island and Cape Cod are the tops of terminal moraines from past glaciations.

Outwash plain: An accumulation of sand and gravel carried by meltwater streams from a glacier, usually deposited immediately beyond the terminal moraine from the glacier. The outwash plain contains a thick layer of rocks deposited close to the glacier in a layer of sand and gravel that can exceed a thickness of 330 feet. The finer silt and clay materials are usually carried much farther and may be deposited in lakes, seas, or distant valleys.

Areas where glaciers form typically leave behind deep bowl shaped depressions and U-shaped valleys. Heavily eroded areas often have very thin soils or bare rock.

Where deposition takes place, we tend to find materials that have been shaped by flowing ice, materials that were carried in meltwater streams and so bear the marks of flowing water, and sediments left behind.