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🧊 Glaciers and the landscapes they leave behind

Follow moving ice as it scrapes bedrock, carves valleys and cirques, deposits moraines and eskers, and leaves a readable archive of past climate and landscape change.

lessons

~30 min

to learn

🔬 Science

subject

Adults

level

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What you’ll learn

Ice begins to moveExplain how snowfall, gravity, internal deformation, basal sliding, and mass balance make a glacier move.A glacier is a slow-flowing body of ice whose movement and changing margin power the landscape story.
The land is carvedIdentify the erosional landforms produced when glaciers abrade, pluck, and widen older valleys.U-shaped valleys, cirques, arêtes, horns, hanging valleys, and fjords record ice removing bedrock.
The debris is sortedDistinguish till, moraines, outwash, eskers, and kettle lakes by how ice and meltwater deposit sediment.Glacial deposits preserve where ice paused, where meltwater flowed, and where stranded ice later melted.
Reading a glacial landscapeUse erratics, drumlins, rock flour, rebound, and retreat evidence to reconstruct former ice movement and change.A glacial landscape is a connected archive whose materials, shapes, and positions reveal process and timing.

Questions this course answers

What makes a valley U-shaped?

Glacial abrasion and plucking work across the floor and walls of an older river valley, producing a broad trough.

What is till?

Till is the mixed clay, sand, gravel, and boulders carried and released by ice without water sorting it by size.

How does a fjord form?

A fjord is a coastal glacial trough later inundated by the sea.

What does a terminal moraine usually mark?

Debris accumulates at the front when a glacier reaches a maximum or pauses long enough for a ridge to form.

Why can a glacier retreat while its ice still flows downhill?

The terminus retreats when loss at the edge is faster than delivery, even while the ice itself continues moving forward.

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