Landforms of Glacial Transportation

Definition

Landforms produced due to the movement of glacier.

All glacial deposits were transported from other sources but landforms specific only to transportation can be considered where the mechanism of motion and its results are the most important factors to be considered. Thus features such as erratics, boulder trains, or glacial erratic indicator fans or dispersal fans are the chief landforms of glacial transportation. Such landforms are commonly recognized as exotic blocks far from their original source that will reveal paleo-flow directions of the ice once the course of transport is determined by finding the original outcrop from which they were derived.

For an erratic to be incorporated within a glacier, it is necessary either for the ice to exert enough tractive force on a block to pick it up from the bed over which it is flowing, or for the block to fall from high cliffs to the glacier surface and be carried along passively thereafter. Small blocks are brought into ice...