- Industry: Government
- Number of terms: 1577
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
The scientific agency of the United States Department of the Interior, USGS's mission is to provide information to describe and understand the earth, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it.
A crackling or sizzling similar to that made by soft drinks or seltzer water but louder. The sound made as air bubbles formed at many atmospheres of pressure are released during the melting of glacier ice.
Industry:Water bodies
A linear depression, inches to miles in length, produced by the removal of rock or sediment by the erosive action of a glacier.
Industry:Water bodies
A decrease in the length of a glacier compared to a previous point in time. As ice in a glacier is always moving forward, its terminus retreats when more ice is lost at the terminus to melting and/or calving than reaches the terminus. During retreat, ice in a glacier does not move back up the valley.
Industry:Water bodies
A pointed, mountain peak, typically pyramidal in shape, bounded by the walls of three or more cirques. Headward erosion has cut prominent faces and ridges into the peak. When a peak has four symmetrical faces, it is called a Matterhorn.
Industry:Water bodies
A lake that exists because its water is restricted from flowing by an ice dam. Sometimes these lakes form because an advancing glacier had blocked a valley.
Industry:Water bodies
A clear boundary line on the wall of a glacier valley that delineates the maximum recent thickness of a glacier. It may be a change in the color of the bedrock, indicating the separation of weathered from unweathered bedrock; the limit of a former lateral moraine or other sediment deposit; or the boundary between vegetated and bare bedrock.
Industry:Water bodies
A thick, subcontinental to continental-scale accumulation of glacier ice and perennial snow that spreads from a center of accumulation, typically in all directions.
Industry:Water bodies
A channelized accumulation of liquid water on (supraglacial), in (englacial), or under (subglacial) a glacier, moving under the influence of gravity.
Industry:Water bodies
The floating terminus of a glacier, typically formed when a terrestrial glacier flow into a deep water basin, such as in Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic.
Industry:Water bodies
Part of a glacier where the ice flows over a bed with a very steep gradient, typically at a higher rate than both above and below. As a result the surface is fractured and heavily crevassed. In a river system, this would be a waterfall.
Industry:Water bodies
