This article was written by Camryn Kluetmeier. Rock glaciers are part of a continuum, with clean-ice glaciers at one end, debris-covered glaciers in the middle, and rock glaciers at the far end. Like glaciers, rock glaciers flow downslope, but the speed at which they flow is variable on a timescale of days, seasons and decades. …
Rock glaciers are relatively small lenses of ice or frozen sediment that are covered by large amounts of seasonally frozen rock debris. The upper debris layer is known as the ‘active layer’, whilst the core of a rock glacier may comprise pure ice or large volumes of more fine-grained sediment. Rock debris is typically sourced from …
This article was written by Katie Miles from Aberystwyth University. Debris-covered glaciers are valley glaciers that have a layer of rocks and sediment on top of the ice surface. While this can range from a thin smattering of rocks to a thick layer several meters deep (even on the same glacier surface), we typically define …
