Cirque Floor Geology

The floor of the cirque ends up bowl shaped as it is the complex convergence zone of combining ice flows from multiple directions and their accompanying rock burdens.

Cirque floor geology. Hence it experiences somewhat greater erosion forces and is most often overdeepened below the level of the cirque s low side outlet stage and its down slope backstage valley. Author s edition boston mass. Corrie combe cwm 1855 robert browning childe roland to the dark tower came in men and women london. The granite creek tarn wrangell st.

Circle amphitheatre shaped basin with precipitous walls at the head of a glacial valley it generally results from erosion beneath the bergschrund of a glacier a bergschrund is a large crevasse that lies a short distance from the exposed rock walls and separates the stationary from the moving ice. Cirques are bowl shaped amphitheater like depressions that glaciers carve into mountains and valley sidewalls at high elevations. True cirque growth only occurs once the thickness of snow patches increases to a point at which glacier ice can form by compaction. Ticknor and fields 1856 oclc 187461130 stanzas 22.

Chapman and hall 193 piccadilly oclc 1561924. Once formed glaciers widen and deepen cirques by subglacial abrasion and quarrying of the hollow floor and lower headwall 3 see diagram below. A cirque experiences greater erosion because of the accompanying rock burdens which may also over deepen the level of a cirque. Often the glaciers flow up and over the lip of the cirque as gravity drives them downslope.

Elias national park alaska sits in a classic bowl shaped cirque. Geology a curved depression in a mountainside with steep walls forming the end of a valley.