Glacial Landforms

Corrie/Cirque Glacier and Tarn





Snow collects in a hollow. As more snow falls, it compressed and the air is squeezed out
to form neve. The pressure exerted by more layers of snow causes the neve to become
glacier ice. Erosion and weathering by abrasion, plucking and freezethaw action will
increase…

Rock Step





As mountain glaciers flow down valley they encounter exposed bed rock of varying
resistance to erosion. The glacier will erode down into weaker rock but have to flow over
the stronger rock. This creates a series of rock steps.
UShaped Valley (Glacial Trough)





A Ushaped valley is the…

The valley sides may also have truncated spurs which are the ends of sloping ridges cut
off by the valley glacier which tends to flow straighter than a river.
Hanging Valley





The sides of Ushaped valleys may have hanging valleys which are side valleys that are
left high on the…

Roche Moutonnee are outcrops of resistant bed rock with a gentle abraded slope on what
would have been the upstream side of the ice (stoss slope) and a steep rougher slope on
the downstream side (lee slope).
The smooth upstream slope is probably caused by abrasion as the ice advances…

When a glacier moves across the underlying rock, the process of abrasion wears it away.
It is the fragments of rock held in the ice that do the abrading, scraping across the rock
surface like nails across a wooden desk top. Larger rock fragments leave deep scratch
marks behind them.…