Glacial erosion has created many stunning landforms, including roche moutonnee, crag and tail formations, ribbon lakes and striations patterns.
Glaciers wear away and carry with them rocks and other material through a process known as glacial erosion. This erosion results from multiple processes: quarrying, plucking and abrasion.
Freeze-thaw weathering
Freeze-thaw weathering occurs when water penetrates cracks, fissures and pore spaces in rock. When frozen and thawed cycles come around again and again, expanding and contracting cracks causes expansion and contraction, eventually weakening them over time and breaking apart altogether. Furthermore, this process breaks down rocks into gravel-size fragments to fine silt-sized particles which form scree slopes or talus piles at the base of steep cliffs or mountains resulting in the formation of scree slopes or piles made up of loose rock debris at their base resulting in scree slopes or mountains being created as debris deposits that results from these processes.
Weathering of this kind occurs most commonly in cold climates and high-altitude regions, typically contributing to shaping glacial environments and producing fascinating landforms such as corries, armchair-shaped hollowed areas on mountain sides, horns and moraine.
Freeze-thaw weathering plays an essential role in regional environmental health by recycling nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium from rocks back into soil, where plants and other organisms take them up as food sources.
Plucking
Glaciers that flow down a mountain slope are powerful erosion agents. Glaciers erode through both abrasion and plucking processes – the former wears away at rock surfaces they scrape against while plucking removes pieces from them by breaking off and trapping them beneath ice, known as clasts.
Landforms created by glaciers can be quite captivating. For example, rocks pounded by glaciers are transformed into faceted clasts, as well as featuring striations lines that show which direction the glacier was traveling and grooves that indicate where it passed over each rock surface. Furthermore, glacial grinding creates fine sediment known as rock flour that accumulates on them over time.
Fine sediment produced by glaciers is found in streams and rivers fed by glaciers, as well as being responsible for their milky color in lakes fed by them. Other erosional features that result from glacial activity include eskers, drumlins, cirques, aretes and horns.
Abrasive action
Glaciers are powerful erosion machines that sculpt landscapes by transporting rocks and sediment. Glaciers erode differently depending on the type and structure of rock being eroded as well as resistance levels; such as through abrasion, plucking or freeze-thaw weathering processes resulting in distinctive glacial landforms that stand out.
Glaciers erode rocks by rubbing against them and leaving striations marks, while plucking occurs when glaciers pick away chunks of rock which then fall off from mountains, leaving hollows behind them.
When multiple glaciers erode a single rock mass, they produce an abrupt mountain peak known as a “horn.” Glaciers create bowl-shaped depressions called cirques in mountain terrain; when multiple cirques are lined up one above another at different elevations they form what is known as a “cirque stairway,” and Germany’s Black Forest offers an iconic example.
Abrasion
As glaciers move forward, they rub against rocks and sediment, scraping away surface debris through a process called abrasion. This can leave behind tool-marks ranging from microscopic scratches to deep gouges that stretch centimetres deep and tens of metres long on bedrock surfaces; additionally, glacial abrasion polishes bedrock surfaces like rocks tumbled in a rock tumbler.
Abrasion occurs through basal sliding, where meltwater seeps into cracks in bedrock beneath a glacier and erodes it away. Furthermore, frost wedging can accelerate erosion by breaking bonds that keep smaller rocks together in glaciers.
Erosional processes result in a variety of landforms known as glacial erosional features. These landforms include cirques, aretes, aretes moutonees roches moutonees fjords rock steps and striations which are easily recognized after attending some geology classes; others however require deeper study in order to comprehend how they were created.