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Shaping of High Mountains by Snow

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Landforms of High Mountains

Abstract

Snow is a major factor of actual landscape shaping in high mountains of the middle and high latitudes. A snow blanket demands the Earth’s surface by pressure and movement, and meltwater also plays an important role. The process of landscape shaping by snow is called nivation (from Latin nix = snow). It can take place very slowly by frost splitting or gliding snow blankets, but also very quickly by snow slab avalanches.

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© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Stahr, A., Langenscheidt, E. (2015). Shaping of High Mountains by Snow. In: Landforms of High Mountains. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-53715-8_6

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