Glaciers-The Identity Of A Glaicer

Out wash has small sediments sorted in layers, and Till has large sediments not sorted into any layers. Till can leave behind features like Kame, Drumlins, and Moraines. Drumlins are elongated hills of till. Drumlins can be found in Central Minnesota and/or South of Brainerd. Moraines are very large ridges of Till. Moraines can be found in West/Central Minnesota. Outwash can leave features behind like Outwash Plains and Eskers. An Outwash plain formed by melt water of a glacier. Outwash plains are important because they are very great for farming which is a huge part of America. Glaciers can leave behind features like Kettle Lakes. Kettle Lakes formed by ice chunks falling off the main glacier, causing an indent on the earth's surface. Then the ice chunk will melt causing the hole to fill up with water. Most of Minnesota’s Kettle lakes are in Moraine/Terminal Moraine

Earth has experienced many episodes of dramatic climate changes with different periods in earth history. There have been periods during which the entire planet has been covered in ice and at another time it has been scorchingly hot and dry. In this regards, earth has experienced at least three major periods of long- term frigid climate and ice ages interspersed with periods of warm climate. The last glacial period which current glaciers are the result of it, occurring during the last years of Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years age (Clayton, 1997). Indeed, glaciers present sensitive indicators of climate change and global warming and by estimating and monitoring the dynamic evolution of these ice masses, several

Outwash and till are similar but different at the same time and this is why they are both deposited by glaciers, but the way they are deposited is what makes them different. Till is simply the sediment left by the ice, outwash is deposited by the running water coming off of the melting glacier. Because water can sort sediment, and ice cannot, that is why the till is unsorted. Sorting just means when the rocks are sorted by size, bigger pieces together on the bottom, smaller pieces together on top. Glaciers are constructive and deconstructive they are deconstructive because they tear up land and the glacier does not stop for anything but it is easy to avoid. Glaciers erode the land and create landforms such as kames, eskers, and drumlins those terms will be explained a little bit later. Glaciers create valleys by shearing away the mountainside and moving it away. Some of the landforms that glaciers produce are drumlins, terminal moraine, outwash plain, and an erratic. Drumlins are elongated, teardrop-shaped hills of rock, sand, and gravel that formed under moving glacier ice. A terminal moraine is where the glacier reaches its max and starts receding making a deposit of till. An outwash plain is a flat area made by meltwater carrying outwash from the leading edge of the glacier. An erratic is a rock or boulder carried from a place where the Rock is common to an area where the rock is not

The Oak Ridges Moraine is landform located in south central Ontario, Canada. It expands from Caledon and Rice lake river. Furthermore, it covers about 1,900 kilometers in Geographic area and is the most important landforms in Ontario. The Oak Ridges Moraine is made out of 4 wedge shaped structures running east to west ( Uxbridge, Pontypool, Rice Lake, and the Albion Hill wedges ). The wedges are separated from east to west and was formed by sedimentation, the Rice Lake wedge is separated from the other three moraines and is south of Rice Lake. The moraine is made out of major geophysical structures that shape the Oak Ridge Moraine. The western portion of the moraine is by the Niagara Escarpment, the escarpment channels give a way for a

Environments where sediments are elated and deposited quickly are high energy environments like ocean shores, or rushing rivers. Eco systems where small particles of sediments are often deposited in low energy areas. This is found in regions where there are deep lakes or swamps. Landforms shaped by erosion are tall, jagged structures with grazes in layers of rock and landforms produced by deposition are flat and low lying. Landforms created by deposition are alluvial fans, sandbars, moraines, eskers, and deserts. While landforms created by erosion are mountains, valleys, hoodoos, sea arches, sea caves, plains, sea cliff and

During the Pinedale glaciation, there were two ice sheets. One of them being the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet was comprised of three main lobes. The Puget Lobe, Okanogan Lobe, and the Purcell Trench Lobe. The one lobe in Northern Idaho, near present day Lake Pend Oreille, was the Purcell Trench Lobe. When these sheets of glacial ice moved south they caused an ice dam to occur. J.T. Pardee states that “The evidence of icebergs, together with the apparent regency of the lake and the variable height of its surface, connect this lake with the glacial period, and readily lend themselves to the suggestion that its dam was of ice” (Pardee, 1910) This ice dam blocked the Clark Fork River which is near the boundary of Idaho and Montana. The water from the river was blocked and began to build up and formed Glacial Lake Missoula. Water

As this river of ice moved slowly over the hidden rocks, the base of the glacier grazed millions of sediments in the Earth. The after math composed of soil, pebbles, cobbles and boulders that pushed forward, smashing rocks into glacial dust. Then the climate began to warm. Melted water from the glaciers carried the soils and rocks away from the dissolving glacier, depositing its leftovers throughout the landscape. This combination of soils and rocks deposited. Then low hills, or moraines, were created across the state. Michigan's glacial drift averages 200 to 300 feet. The scraping of boulders created particles. The heaviest pieces formed ridges, which made the stream's flow in a certain direction. Lighter materials were carried further, dropping on the way as the flowing water slowed. These materials dried forming enormous, flat colored areas of sand, silt, clay creating a mixture called the outwash plains. The weight of the glacier over the Michigan basin was dropping, and the Earth began to recoil, like a sponge coming back to its original shape. The Michigan landscape began to appear. Plants began to approach on the shriveled landscape. Individual plants found a suitable growing environment near each other, which created a suitable home for

The latest rocks in this region were formed in Pleistocene time as imperfectly consolidated gravel of river terraces and alluvial deposits of the

Champaign County was first covered by the Illinois Glacier (191,000—130,000 years ago), which leveled the region and covered it in a deposit of boulder clay. The county’s topography was then formed by the Wisconsin Glacier about 20,000 years ago. As lobes of ice from what is now Lake Michigan crossed the county, a deep (up to 300 ft) pile of glacial soil was created and topped by numerous moraines (any glacially formed accumulations of unconsolidated debris) forming small, flat watersheds with no outlets. The moraines formed as the Wisconsin Glacier advanced and receded many times over the Midwest. The Champaign moraine system now crosses the county in a northwest-southeast direction, and between the moraines ridges are broad plains of what used to be swampy land, most of which has since been artificially drained.

The Koffler Scientific Reserve at Joker’s Hill is located at the western end of Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM), hence they share common geological features. Therefore, just as in the rest of the ORM, the parent material or bedrock of Joker’s Hill is Ordovician shale and limestone (Johnson et al., 1992). 570 million years ago, what is now southern Ontario was under warm shallow seas (Rock Ontario, 1994, p.49). Between 401-417 million years ago, the sea started to recede and left sand, clay and silt deposits in the region. With time, the materials left behind were compressed into sedimentary rocks. After the retreat of the sea, coral reefs eventually became the coral rocks and the marine species eventually became carbonated rocks--both types of which contain calcium. After long term erosion, the calcium and carbonate rocks became the main composition of the limestone (Goreau, 2006). During the Pleistocene, about 2 million years ago, the Wisconsin glacier advanced across southern Ontario, depositing glacial sediments directly

Glaciers also left us many moraines in the state of Michigan. Moraines are land masses where debris, carried by glaciers has formed ridges or mounds. Moraines can be an indicator of the end of a large glacial retreat. Moraines are created by the wasting ice sheet and are composed of glacial till. Glacial till (unsorted glacial sediment) is laid down quickly as the glacier moves and is composed of various sediments with many rocks and stones. In Michigan there are many famous moraines. As the lucky residents of Marquette we can look out our windows and see evidence of glaciers because of all of our rolling hills. Rolling landforms are a typifying aspect of a moraine.

and come apart and allow for countless sheets of lava to be transferred out over the land (Hay, 1992). Through time the ice caps frequently collected and spread over enormous extents in North America. In this timeframe, movements to the south would occur making the ice push and relocate expansive quantities of soils and rocks. This movement effected how the great glacial streams would flow (Hay, 1992). With the extremely large rains and glacial ice melting valleys and flooding played a great role in the Pleistocene.

Many millions of years ago the Sierra Nevada was filled with ocean water until sediments began collecting and formed mountain ranges. Over a large period of time, the mountains began to wear out and became immersed in the ocean once again. Many different particles and materials began to make layers and created the first mountain system. After the Jurassic era, “…new strata were folded and crumpled and invaded by molten granite from below” (Beatty, 1943). A large

Glaciers take part in two of the Earth's cycles hydrology and the rock cycle. When precipitation falls at high attitudes where glaciers exist, the rain or snow becomes a part of the glacier and may be stored in the glacier for up to thousands of years. Glaciers move very slow but are very important in erosion of rocks. (Lutgens & Tarbuck)

To sum up, Snowball Earth is the most accepted theory to explain the glacial period. The hypothesis is supported by cap carbonates, BIFs, and paleomagnetism. However, more strong evidence is required to fully support it and thus the research is still