Landscapes created by glaciers: moraines

Each year, rocks provided by frost shatter fall onto the surface of the glaciers from the surrounding slopes. They will move together with the ice and finally reach the lower terminus of the glacier, where they will stay to form a moraine. The moraine cover can protect a remaining ice core hidden under the moraine cover, forming an ice-cored moraine. The Longyearbreen moraine still consists mostly of ice, even if it remains invisibly under a thin cover. If the protecting moraine cover is too thin to protect the ice from the summer warmth, then melting of ice will create thermokarst or a dead ice topography with frequent mudslides and collapse structures and small mudholes.

Platåbreenmorene, Svalbard, Norway

Larsbreenmorene, Svalbard, Norway

Longyearmorene, Svalbard, Norway