=Transportation.= Valley glaciers differ from rivers as carriers in
that they float the major part of their load upon their surface,
transporting the heaviest bowlder as easily as a grain of sand; while
streams push and roll much of their load along their beds, and their
power of transporting waste depends solely upon their velocity. The
amount of the surface load of glaciers is limited only by the amount
of waste received from the mountain slopes above them. The moving
floor of ice stretched high across a valley sweeps along as lateral
moraines much of the waste which a mountain stream would let
accumulate in talus and alluvial cones.
While a valley glacier carries much of its load on top, an ice sheet,
such as that of Greenland, is free from surface debris, except where
moraines trail away from some nunatak. If at its edge it breaks into
separate glaciers which drain down mountain valleys, these tongues of
ice will carry the selvages of waste common to valley glaciers. Both
ice sheets and valley glaciers drag on large quantities of rock waste
in their ground moraines.
Stones transported by glaciers are sometimes called erratics. Such are
the bowlders of the drift of our northern states. Erratics may be set
down in an insecure position on the melting of the ice.
=Deposit.= Little need be added here to what has already been said of
ground and terminal moraines. All strictly glacial deposits are
unstratified. The load laid down at the end of a glacier in the
terminal moraine is loose in texture, while the drift lodged beneath
the glacier as ground moraine is often an extremely dense, stony clay,
having been compacted under the pressure of the overriding ice.
=Erosion.= A glacier erodes its bed and banks in two ways,--by
abrasion and by plucking.
The rock bed over which a glacier has moved is seen in places to have
been abraded, or ground away, to smooth surfaces which are marked by
long, straight, parallel scorings aligned with the line of movement of
the ice and varying in size from hair lines and coarse scratches to
exceptional furrows several feet deep. Clearly this work has been
accomplished by means of the sharp sand, the pebbles, and the larger
stones with which the base of the glacier is inset, and which it holds
in a firm grasp as running water cannot. Hard and fine-grained rocks,
such as granite and quartzite, are often not only ground down to a
smooth surface but are also highly polished by means of fine rock
flour worn from the glacier bed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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