Glaciers

Glaciers consist of ice crystals, air, water, and rock debris. The most important part of a glacier is the ice crystals. Glaciers can be found wherever it is suitable for snow to collect and survive. There are five types of glaciers: Ice Sheets, Ice Shelves, Ice Fields, Valley Glaciers, and Cirque Glaciers.

Ice Sheets are almost the same as ice caps, the only difference between the two is that Ice Sheets are larger. They can be found in Greenland and Antarctica.

Ice Shelves are very thick sheets of ice that were shoved out over the seafloor from another land-based glacier. It is sometimes still attached to the land with one side.

Ice Fields are an extensive area of land ice covering a mountain range.

Valley Glaciers can be located between the walls of a mountain valley thus giving the glacier its name.

A Cirque Glacier is a small ice mass occupying an armchair-shaped bedrock hollow. It is the most common glacier formation in the mountains of the western United States.