Landforms produced by the erosion and deposition of moving ice (glaciers), found in high mountains and in formerly ice-covered regions.
- Erosional features: U-shaped (trough) valleys, cirques (armchair hollows, called corries), aretes (sharp ridges between cirques), horns (pyramidal peaks, such as the Matterhorn), and hanging valleys.
- Depositional features: moraines (ridges of unsorted debris called till), drumlins (low egg-shaped mounds), eskers (winding ridges of meltwater deposits), and outwash plains.
- A moraine is named by position: lateral (sides), medial (where two glaciers meet), terminal or end (snout), and ground (beneath).
- Glacial erratics are large boulders carried far from their source and dropped by ice.
- In India, glacial landforms occur in the high Himalayas; the Gangotri and Siachen are major glaciers, the latter also of high strategic importance.
The erosional versus depositional lists, the U-shaped versus V-shaped valley contrast, and the Himalayan glaciers (Siachen has a security dimension) are recurring geography facts.
U-shaped (glacial trough) versus V-shaped (river) valley; cirque (hollow) versus arete (ridge) versus horn (peak); moraine (unsorted till) versus esker (sorted meltwater deposit).
Ice carves U-valleys, cirques, aretes, and horns, and deposits moraines, drumlins, and eskers; Siachen and Gangotri are Himalayan glaciers.