Glaciers Lauren Kelley

What is a glacier? A glacier is a thick ice mass that forms over hundreds of thousands of years. They are formed by a combination of ice, water, and rock debris. Since they are huge chucks of ice they move slowly across the water. It’s layers of snow piled on top of layers.

Some facts about Glaciers Presently, 10% of the Earth's land area is covered with glaciers. Glaciers store about 75% of the world's freshwater. Glacier ice crystals can grow to be as large as baseballs. Glacial ice often appears blue because ice absorbs all other colors and reflects blue. Almost 90% of an iceberg is below water--only about 10% shows above water. The Earth could be considered to actually be in an "interglacial" period. Perhaps one day, our future descendants will have to deal with "The New Ice Age" rather than Global Warming

Types of Glaciers 2 general types Alpine or Mountain glaciers Crique glaciers, Niche glaciers, piedmont glaciers Continental glaciers the relatively small ice caps, and the mammoth ice sheets. Also have ice shelf's, ice caps or ice sheets, and Iceberg

Ice Age One happened about 600 million years ago Second one happened about 275 million years A third one happened about 1.5 million years ago. And has ended within the past 15,000 years. During Ice Age, ice covered 32% of the entire land area of the planet. http://members.aol.com/scipioiv/whatisaglacier.html

The location of Glaciers today http://www.glacier.rice.edu/land/5_warmice.html

United States Glaciers Found in Northwest United States, Washington and Alaska In Alaska there is the Malaspina Glacier and the Bering Glacier. The Washington glaciers are said to provide 1.7 trillion liters of water each summer.

http://www.uvm.edu/whale//GlaciersWhatAre.html http://members.aol.com/scipioiv/glacialgeology.html