Glacial erosion alters landscapes through two distinct processes: plucking and abrasion, leading to landforms such as faceted clasts, striations grooves, glacial pavements and rock flour.
Widening and deepening narrow V-shaped valleys into U-shaped ones is another effect. Other features include cirques, paternoster lakes, bergschrunds, aretes, roche moutonnee and hanging valleys.
Plucking
Glaciers are known for shaping unique landscapes with remarkable effectiveness; however, the exact mechanisms by which they do this remain poorly understood. One possible explanation may be that glacial erosion occurs much more rapidly than fluvial erosion.
Glaciers erode bedrock through ploughing and abrasion. Ploughing occurs when water seeps into cracks in underlying rocks, freezes, and then pushes rock away from other parts of the bedrock – leaving behind broken fragments that will be carried by glaciers until eventually being dumped as moraines.
This process gives rise to features like U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, U-shaped valleys, U-shaped valleys. When two different cirques converge onto one mountain they sometimes leave behind an irregular sharply pointed ridge called roche moutonnee. In areas that had once been covered by glaciers these long parallel grooves on bedrock; such as Yosemite National Park’s Tuolumne Meadows.
Abrasion
Glacial erosion occurs when glacier ice scrapes and drags rocks as it moves over them, much like using sandpaper on wood to smooth and wear away surfaces. It is the primary factor responsible for producing medium-sized glacial landforms like roche moutonnees, whalebacks, rock drumlins, and cirques.
Abrasion occurs most significantly when both ice and rock are moving quickly. A glacier that slows down may become lodged against bedrock; if it continues accelerating however, its surface will slide like sandpaper over bedrock causing numerous scars known as striations scars to form on both surfaces.
These scars give rise to the characteristic features of glacial erosion: faceted clasts, striations and grooves, glacial polish and pavements. Glacial erosion also forms corries (circular mountain basins); troughs which cut through old river valleys; and pyramidal peaks when two or more corries erode back toward each other at the summit of mountains – sometimes through plucking, but often via abrasion.
Freeze-thaw weathering
Freeze-thaw weathering is a process which causes glacial erosion. This occurs when water seeps into cracks in rocks, freezes and expands, eventually breaking apart the rock surface. This form of erosion occurs frequently in mountainous regions where temperatures change between freezing and thawing cycles.
Glaciers erode rock and sediment through various means, including abrasion and plucking, creating landforms such as corrie, arete and pyramidal peak. Furthermore, glaciers also carve armchair-shaped hollows into mountains known as cirques and turn U-shaped valleys carved by rivers into V-shaped ones with deep bottoms.
Abrasion and plucking typically occur in glaciated regions, though they can also occur in nonglaciated environments where rocks have been dislodged by ice. Physical weathering also plays an important role in erosion; its forces of fluctuating temperatures cause rocks to break apart into pieces, often assisted by freeze-thaw weathering as water seeps into cracks in rocks before freezing and expanding, gradually breaking them up over time.
Trim line
Glaciers erode the rocks they cover, producing different kinds of landforms through glacial erosion. Such landforms include cirques, troughs, rock basins and fjords as well as pointed mountain peaks known as “horns,” created when multiple glaciers work to erode one mountain summit at once.
Glaciers’ erosion of land depends on various factors, including their rate of movement and climate in their region. High altitude glaciers tend to cause greater erosive action than lower ones.
As glaciers move faster, their impact becomes greater on surrounding areas. The faster movement leads to greater erosion that results in a distinct line separating areas impacted by glaciers from unaffected ones known as trim lines – often clearly visible due to less fertile and vegetation-filled land on one side than on the other; making identifying glacier valley rims simple.