Can you guess what this is?
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Covers 10% of the land in the world
Crystals can be as large as baseballs
Have shelves that are over 80 km long
90% of it is below water.
Is blue!
Stores 75% of the fresh water in the world.
Makes up our present day soils.
• Covers 10% of the land in the world
Presently 10% of all land is covered by
glaciers.
Crystals can be as large as baseballs
Glacier ice crystals can be this size!!
Have shelves that are over 80
km long
• Antartica’s glaciers have calve ice
shelves that may be over 80 km long.
90% of it is below
water.
•
90% of the iceberg
is below water—
what you see is
only 10% above
the water!!
• Is Blue!!!
• Glacial ice is white when there are many
air bubbles, but ice is extremely
compacted and dense, ice is blue.
• Stores 75% of the fresh water in the world.
• 75% of the freshwater is frozen in the
glaciers and is unavailable for our use.
GLACIATION
Environmental Science
Earth’s Glaciers
Glaciers
• Cover 10% of Earth’s surface.
• Majority of glacial ice is tied up in
Anarctica and Greenland.
• Also found in sub-polar and polar coastline
mountain ranges in the world.
Glacial Formation
Glacier: an accumulation of snow that lasts
for more than one year.
As snow accumulates, compresses layers
below to form ice—takes thousands of
years.
Glacial Formation
Glaciers appear blue
b/c they are so thick.
Glacial Bay Glacier
Schwarze Schneid mountain at
the Soelden glacier.
Largest Glacier in world
• http://science.howstuffworks.com/glacier.h
tm#
Glaciers and
Latitude
Glaciers in North America
Glaciers made most of the landforms we
have in Illinois incl:
• Glacial lakes
• Kettle lakes
• Till
• Moraines
Glaciers
began in
northern
Canada
Glacial Formation
• http://maps.howstuffworks.com/maps-ofgreenland.htm
• How the Great Lakes were formed:
• http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/greatlakeskids/Gre
atLakesMovie5.html
Northern Illinois glaciers
Illinois Landscape
Current landscape shaped by:
-Ice sheet was 1 mile thick
-Occurred 25,000-14,000 ya
-Ice (Laurentide period) covered much of
Canada and northern US
-Formed Lake Michigan
Landforms created by glaciers from
Canada
Continental glaciers
Invaded IL repeatedly
during the Ice Age.
Ice Age lasted 2.4
Mya to 10,000 ya.
Geologists believe that this what
northern IL looked like
Ice Sheet
Ice Sheet invasion
From Canada
flowed into NE
Illinois and Lake
Michigan.
Glaciation
• Climate and temperatures different during
IL Ice Ages
– Temperature at or near freezing
– Precipitation in form of snow
– Mastodons and Woolly Mammoths roamed
the region.
Moraines
Low rises of land caused
By the invading and
Retreating ice during Ice
Ages.
Moraine Formation
Moraine animation
Till
Unsorted mixture of soil
and debris form till (heavy
sand & gravel outwash)
Kettle Lakes
• Kettle lakes form when a block of buried
ice left by the retreating glacier melts and
forms a hole, sometimes quite deep.
Before Kettle Lake formed
Kettle lake
to form here
Kettle lake forms
Bull Frog Lake
is a kettle lake
near Cook
County Forest
Preserve
Kames are:
Cone-shaped
hills in areas of
ground moraine.
When the ice
melts, the
sediment filling
these
depressions is
let down onto
the land surface.
Eskers are:
• elongated s-shaped or ridges in areas of
ground moraine. When the glacier melts,
the deposits that fill the tunnels are let
down onto the surface as ridges.
Eskers & Kames