Glaciology

Located in northeast Oregon is the Wallowa Mountains, which contain a rich and understudied glacial history. In order to quantify the number of glaciation stages that have occurred in this locality I will examine twelve lateral moraines that border Wallowa Lake. This beautiful lake stretches 3 and a half miles north to south with a large, bordering moraine on each side and a terminal moraine at the north end. On the west side of the lake there are four moraines and on the east there are eight. As you move from the closest moraine to the farthest from the lake the respective ages of each moraine get older. There has been some age correlation between the west and some of the east moraines as illustrated in Crandell’s “Glaciation at Wallowa Lake,…

Glaciers and Climate Change Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of freshwater, supporting one third of the world's population. Glaciers exist on all continents except Australia and at virtually all latitudes from the tropics to the poles. “How can a piece of a very large ice effect anything?” was my thought before I truly know what glacier is. According to national snow & ice data center, glaciers are made up accumulation of fallen snow exceeds its ablation over many years, and even centuries. …

Permafrost Remember Mood Rings? They were rings that change colors depending on your emotions. At least that’s what they wanted us to think. Mood Rings are really thermochroic liquid crystals that color changes based on the temperature of the finger. Something that seems so permanent like the color of a crystal is subject to change just by the mere change of the temperature of its environment. Some environments are also rigid and structured just like the crystals in Mood Rings, but yet, are also…

Glaciers were once present in Minnesota thousands of years ago, and as they retreated, they left behind large amounts of glacial meltwater and various landforms still present to this day. A glacier is a massive piece of ice that completely destroys everything in its path. A glacier is formed when snow is present in a location for a long period of time, long enough to freeze all together to be conjoined into a massive chunk of ice. Glaciers are usually formed on a high elevation location. When on…

The Wisconsin Glaciation of Minnesota Glaciers have been around for thousands of years and there are still many glaciers on the earth today. A glacier is a mass of ice that moves sometimes only inches a year. They move pieces of earth from one place to another and they drastically change the landscape around us. There are two types of glaciers, the alpine glaciers and the continental glaciers. Alpine glaciers form in mountains and flow down through valleys and continental glaciers can…

“Snowball Earth” is a hypothesis that proposes that the Earth was entirely frozen around 650 Ma in the Neoproterozoic Era. Others hypothesize that the Earth was not entirely frozen but had to have some sort of water flowing. In the Neoproterozoic Era, 1.0 Ga to 541 Ma, a lot is known and much is unknown. This was a time on Earth when the earliest multicellular lifeforms can be found, 635 Ma to 542 Ma. This was a time when the sum of the continents were all gathered on or near the equatorial…

What is Tundra? The tundra can be found at the top of the earth close to the North Pole. It’s a huge biome that looks so nice and covers the fifth of the earth’s surface. Tundra comes from the word Tunturia. Tundra is the coldest biome in the earth, and it’s hard to live in it from how cold it is. Tundra doesn’t have trees (treeless) in the Arctic and top of the mountains where the climate is cold or windy. Extremely low temperature and a little precipitation Tundra’s lands are…

Ethnoarchaeological and Ethnohistorical data on mobility furthers understandings of the reorganization (α) phase of the Denesųłiné adaptive cycle. Denesųłiné need to travel efficiently to follow the caribou herds. Three innovations have allowed Denesųłiné to do this: snowshoes, dog sleds and snowmobiles. Walking was the primary form of travel identified in oral traditions. The snowshoe was a great technological advance critical for winter travel. According to Denesųłiné, its invention was from…

The Jacobsville Formation is the earliest formation of the Cambrian Period. Jacobsville Sandstone has a distinguishing characteristic about its deposition that sets it apart from the other formations in the Paleozoic Era. Jacobsville Sandstone is a stream and lake deposit unlike most of the other deposits which were marine sediment deposits. The sandstone is also uniquely red with light coloured marks throughout it which is caused by chemical leaching transversely throughout the bedding planes.…

Glaciers are defined as a persistent body of extremely dense ice that forms over millions of years in result of very cold temperatures that occurred on Earth during the Ice Age. The formation of Glaciers results when an abundance of snow exceeds its melting and sublimation point over many centuries. However, the introduction of global warming to the Earth is causing an adverse effect on all glaciers around the world, thus riding the world of the essential necessities glaciers have provided us…