Features of a glacial landscape
The diagram below shows some features of a glacial landscape.
- A pyramidal peak has steep, triangular faces divided by sharp ridges or arĂȘtes.
- An arĂȘte is a sharp ridge between corries.
- A corrie is an armchair-shaped hollow with steep back and sides.
- A corrie loch, or tarn, is a body of water which has gathered in the hollow in the corrie floor.
- An alluvial fanA fan-shaped deposit of material built-up by streams that flow over a hanging valley. is a fan-shaped pile of rock remains (alluvium) washed down by a stream and piled up where a steep valley side meets the valley floor.
- A ribbon lake is a long narrow lake in a part of the valley cut deeper by the glacier.
- A truncated spur exists because a ridge has been cut off sharply by the ice that flowed down the main valley.
- A misfit stream is so-called because it is far too small to have cut the valley.
- A hanging valleyA smaller valley which is located high above the main U-shaped valley. is called this because the valley floor is much higher than the floor of the main valley.
- A U-shaped valley has steep sides and a nearly flat floor. (The other side of the valley is missing in this cut-away diagram).
Sample questions
The sample questions that follow show ways of using diagrams to explain how the most common features were formed.
Question
How is a corrie formed?
- snow collects in hollows
- snow compacts to ice
- ice moves under gravity
- lubricated by melt water
- ice rotates to lip
- abrasion deepens corrie
- plucking steepens back and sides
- corrie loch may fill hollow
Question
How is a pyramidal peak (horn) formed?
- Three or more corries are eroded backwards into the same mountain.
- The ice steepens the back walls through plucking.
- Abrasion deepens the hollows.
- freeze-thaw weatheringWhen water in rocks freezes and expands, breaking the rock apart. creates a jagged peak.
- Where corrie sidewalls meet they form arĂȘtes (knife-edge ridges).
- With a pyramidal peak in the middle.
Question
How is a U-shaped valley formed?
- A glacier flows in an earlier V-shaped river valley.
- The glacier plucks rocks from the sides of the valley making it steeper.
- And abrades the floor of the valley making it wider and deeper.
- The interlocking spurs have been cut-off by the ice and changed to truncated spurs.
- When the ice melts the valley has changed from a V-shape to U-shape.
- It has very steep sides and a fairly flat floor.
- Any later rivers are called 'misfit streams' because they are far too small to have cut the valley.