Kamil Pyciak

Glaciers - Nature's Frozen Giants and its Features

A river of ice, slowly flowing downhill. That's a glacier! They are massive icy bodies that are constantly moving downhill. As more snow falls, they add to its mass rather than melts which accumulate over the years or even centuries and compressed into a solid ice.

Nature enthusiast, Kamil Pyciak says they are mostly found in cold, mountainous regions and near the poles and scientists sometimes study glaciers when they want to understand how the planet has changed overtime. "Glaciers are also important sources of freshwater.

As they melt, they release water into rivers, lakes, and oceans. This water is essential for drinking, agriculture, and other human activities, explains. While glaciers are beautiful and fascinating, they can also be affected by climate change.

Rising temperatures are causing glaciers to melt at an alarming rate, which can lead to sea level rise and other environmental problems. Let's take a look at some of the coolest glacier-created features!

U-Shaped Valleys

Due to the movement of glaciers, the terrain gets eroded as the glaciers move, resulting in the formation of deep depressions. Glaciers are responsible for forming broad, flat-bottomed basins with vertical walls instead of the V-shaped timeworn structures left by rivers.

Such hollows are quite often present with a U-shaped cross section, in which the bottom is relatively flat or rounded. Another term for U-shaped valleys is Trough valleys or glacial troughs. One of the famous U-shaped valleys is Yosemite Valley, located in California.

Fjords

Fjords are like U-shaped valleys but filled with seawater. They are long, narrow inlets of water that reach far inland. When glaciers retreat (melt), they leave behind deep, steep-sided valleys that become flooded by the ocean, creating long, narrow inlets of water.

Norway boasts of most of the world's breathtaking fjords. "The narrowest, longest and the most beautiful fjords with the likes of Geirangerfjord, the Nærøyfjord, the Aurlandsfjord, and the Lysefjord," Kamil Pyciak adds.

Hanging Valleys

Sometimes smaller glaciers flow into larger ones. The smaller glacier doesn't erode the valley floor as deeply, so when the glaciers melt, the smaller valley is left "hanging" above the main valley. The smaller glacier may not be as deep as the main one and its base may be higher in elevation than the main one. says this is what sometimes brings about waterfalls that tumbles from the hanging valley into the larger one below.