Soil and Glaciers Essays

A glacier is a large mass of ice that flows very slowly. A glacier forms by the compression and/or crystallization of snow that has stayed in one place year round. Glaciers can be constructive and/or destructive. Glaciers can be constructive by leaving sediments behind, or destructive by gauging the earth's surface. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota, thousands of years ago, and as they retreated, they left behind large amounts of glacial meltwater and various landforms, still present today.

Remote sensing has become a very valuable tool for documenting the response of glacier to changing climate (Bamber and Kwok, 2003; Kuhn, 2007; Pellikka, 2007; Solomon et al, 2007) because the rugged terrain, inaccessibility and legendary poor weather of glacier areas has resulted in relatively few field- based studies. Indeed, in order to use glaciers and their changes as indicators of climate change, or as an early warning signal for sea level rise, remote sensing is the only tool to provide glacier change information from all the continents and from a large number of glaciers and ice sheets. On the other hands, because space borne and airborne remote sensing data provide superior cost- effective and area effective data and methods for monitoring the glaciers and their changes, part of this monitoring can be carried out by it.

A glacier is a large body of ice that moves slowly across land and are formed by there being a higher snow gain rather than a snow melt. Glaciers move by a small amount of ice melting and the glacier sliding. Glaciers can help and destroy the landscape in front of them but they can also shape the land into something amazing. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota thousands of years ago and played a massive role on the landscape we live on today, and as they melted they left behind large amounts of water and formations.

Complete this week’s lab by filling in your responses to the questions from Geoscience Laboratory. Select answers are provided for you in red font to assist you with your lab work. Although you are only required to respond to the questions in this worksheet, you are encouraged to answer others from the text on your own.

Vast numbers and kinds of organisms, mainly microorganisms, inhabit soil and depend on it for shelter, food, and water. Plants anchor themselves in soil, and from it they receive essential minerals and water. Terrestrial plants could not survive without soil, and because we depend on plants for our food, humans could not exist without soil either (Wiley, 2013).

The term glacial drift commonly is used to re- fer to any material deposited directly (e.g., ground moraine) or indirectly (e.g., outwash) by a glacier. Because the ice that invaded Ohio came from Canada, it carried in many rock types not found in Ohio. Pebbles, cobbles, and boulders of these foreign rock types are called erratics. Rock collect- ing in areas of glacial drift may yield granite, gneiss, trace quantities of gold, and very rarely, diamonds. Most rocks found in glacial deposits, however, are types native to

At the nearby valley wall, there is a distribution of rock lithology including mostly Limestone. The roundness of the samples is all angular, with a mean size of 8.325 cm in diameter. However, the stream bank has more clastic rock samples which have a rounder shape and a smaller mean size of 7.975 cm. These contrasting sections are between alluvium and colluvium data where the alluvium

A glacier occurs when the climate of an area is so cold that new snow does not completely melt each summer and more snow is added in the winter. After many winters the accumulation of this snow becomes compact and re-crystallizes, thus forming a glacier. Currently, glaciers cover about ten percent of the Earth's surface. Yet, in the past, glaciers covered much more land and were thousands of meters thick. (Tierney)

Slowly over time, the glaciers began to increase in size and suck up the ocean water and lower the sea levels. As the sea levels lowered, land between

Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist, studied a glacier on Mount Baker, in Washington State. The glaciers are melting, as the planet becomes warmer. “At the rate it is losing mass, it won’t make it 50 years,” said Pelto. Glaciers from Mount Baker and the North Cascades are getting smaller. Over the past thirty years, seven glaciers have melted. An estimate was made that the 116 glaciers that they studied in Alaska have lost a total of 75 billion metric tons of ice. There were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1850. Now, there are only 25."They are losing volume at a faster rate than ever before," Pelto said. "If you cannot sustain a glacier at a place like this in the Lower 48 states, there is no hope."

Glaciers have helped define the topography of earth for many years. A glacier is a large mass of ice that has been compacted of snow and ice for a long period of time. The ice age we will be focusing on is the Pleistocene era, which was “a period that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago” (513). This was the most recent ice age where it helped formed our present-day lands. During this time, ice covered about 19 million square miles which was about 1/3 of earth’s land surface (515). Many parts of all the continents were covered with ice and that had a great effect on our topography due to the glaciers it created.

When I observed the stream table I noticed that, the water was moving the sediments so powerful and it made a deep path through the sediments.To explain, the water was powerful enough to move something in seconds while for most children, it takes minutes to even make a distinguished hole in the sand. Also, in the stream table I observed that, the water created a small delta in the “stream “.This means, that even in a small classroom experiment it created a small version of a landform.Adding on, in my stream table observations I also noticed that even though there wasn’t much water so much happened with the sediments.To explain, when Mrs.Rodis poured the water at first it was a very small amount but it impacted the sediments so fast.Water is a very powerful resource it can impact through both weathering and

Glaciers are one of the most fundamental phenomenon on the planet, and much of their purpose and impact on earth has been well documented and published. Ice sheets, Ice Caps and Glaciers trap nearly 90% of the world's fresh water, and are replenished by snowfall each year. Their existence on this planet dates back 650,000,000 years and yet they are always moving, always shifting and always melting. Before, human existence and even during the brief era of humans, ice dominated all of the earth's landmass and have regulated, created and altered many of the landscapes around the world.

A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.

Sun and light rain can also produce thin surface crusts, which make it difficult for new snow to bond securely. Rain weakens the bonds in the snow and increases its mass. But when rain freezes, it can strengthen and bind the snow. Hoarfrost's, which are flat frozen crystals, can also form on the surface of the snow in extremely cold weather, creating a slippery layer when covered by new snow (Baugher).