What is the difference between a truncated spur and a hanging valley

Ice has a rotational movement towards the lip of the hollow 5. Plucking and abrasion by the ice deepens the hollow 6. Steep back walls are also produced. It is likely that several corries will be forming around the mountain top each producing steep back walls. Pyramidal peaks form when three or more cirques cut backwards into the same mountain. This is continually sharpened by frost action and plucking. Steep sided, angular faces The contour lines are very close together at this point, which tells us that a pyramidal peak is here.

Truncated spurs are rounded areas of land which have been cut off. They are often rounded at the top but steep at the bottom. They are formed when glaciers move through the main valley and cut off spurs. Truncated Spur The contour lines are close together, which shows that the land is steep and hilly. This signifies that there might be a truncated spur here. A hanging valley This is an example of a hanging valley in Patterdale, Cumbria.

A hanging valley is a tributary valley that enters the side of a U shaped glaciated valley. Originally the 'hanging' valley would have joined the main valley in a normal way, its streams or rivers flowing into the main valley at the same level. The main valley was made deeper by glaciation, but the side valleys were left at their original level.

When the ice melted they were no longer level with the bottom of the valley due to the deepening which had occurred. They appear to 'hang' on the steep sides of the new valley, their streams flowing into the main valley through waterfalls. A Hanging Valley 6. Total views 1, On Slideshare 0. From embeds 0. Number of embeds 2. Downloads Shares 0. Comments 0. Likes 0. You just clipped your first slide! In areas where there are differences in the strength of rocks, a glacier obviously tends to erode the softer and weaker rock more effectively than the harder and stronger rock.

Much of central and eastern Canada, which was completely covered by the huge Laurentide Ice Sheet at various times during the Pleistocene, has been eroded to a relatively flat surface.

In many cases the existing relief is due the presence of glacial deposits — such as drumlins, eskers, and moraines all discussed below — rather than to differential erosion Figure Alpine glaciers produce very different topography than continental glaciers, and much of the topographic variability of western Canada can be attributed to glacial erosion. In general, glaciers are much wider than rivers of similar length, and since they tend to erode more at their bases than their sides, they produce wide valleys with relatively flat bottoms and steep sides — known as U-shaped valleys Figure Howe Sound, north of Vancouver, was occupied by a large glacier that originated in the Squamish, Whistler, and Pemberton areas, and then joined the much larger glacier in the Strait of Georgia.

Howe Sound and most of its tributary valleys have pronounced U-shaped profiles Figure U-shaped valleys and their tributaries provide the basis for a wide range of alpine glacial topographic features, examples of which are visible on the International Space Station view of the Swiss Alps shown in Figure This area was much more intensely glaciated during the past glacial maximum. At that time, the large U-shaped valley in the lower right was occupied by glacial ice, and all of the other glaciers shown here were longer and much thicker than they are now.

But even at the peak of the Pleistocene Glaciation, some of the higher peaks and ridges would have been exposed and not directly affected by glacial erosion. A peak that extends above the surrounding glacier is called a nunatuk. In these areas, and in the areas above the glaciers today, most of the erosion is related to freeze-thaw effects. Some of the important features visible in Figure Some of these alpine-glaciation erosional features are also shown in Figure See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ».

A steep bluff on the side of a glacial trough, protruding between tributary, possibly hanging, valleys. This landform is the result of mainly vertical glacial erosion. From: truncated spur in A Dictionary of Geography ». Subjects: Science and technology — Earth Sciences and Geography.

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