Landscape image interpretation task

• View the images in each of these slides.• There is a question beneath each image –

attempt to answer each one.• Note down your answers so that you can

review them later or use them as part of a class discussion.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Matterhorn#mediaviewer/File:Valais_mountains.jpg

The Alps (Switzerland) Blue Ridge Mountains, South Carolina, USA

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Ridge_Mountains_at_Tamassee,_South_Carolina.jpg?uselang=en-gb

Ignoring the fact that one of the images has snow and ice in it and the other does not,What differences do you notice in the shapes of the two landscapes?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weathering_freeze_thaw_action,_Spain.jpg?uselang=en-gb

Why are the rocks sharp and jagged in the mountain photo and smooth and rounded at the beach?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shingle_Beach_-_geograph.org.uk_-_580940.jpg?uselang=en-gb

Luis Paquito

Anne Burgess

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA

The sharp edged, angular rocks on this slope are called pieces of ‘scree’ (or ‘talus’). Can you think of what ‘physical weathering’ process has broken up the rock into these pieces? And how does it work?

DEA

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Olympus_Blue_Glacier_from_Lateral_Moraine_Panorama.jpg?uselang=en-gb

Notice the rocky debris along the sides of this glacier (called ‘lateral moraine’)Viewed close up, the pieces of rock would be jagged and angular as in the previous photo. Where has this rocky debris come from, and how do you think it got to the glacier?

Aaron Linville

Blue Glacier, Olympic Range, Washington State, USA

A photo looking underneath a glacier

http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/glossary/glacier-sole-en.html

How do you think pieces of rock debris can get picked up by the glacieras it moves over the ground? Hint: there is melting and refreezing of waterbeneath glaciers.

J.Alean & M.Hambrey

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacial_striations.JPG?uselang=en-gb

These scratches (glacial ‘striations’) formed in the past when a glacier was in this valley.Can you describe the process that caused the scratches on this rock outcrop? Hint: glaciers move rocky debris inside and under them as well as along the surface.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:V-shaped_valley_below_Craig_y_Gath_-_geograph.org.uk_-_811259.jpg?uselang=en-gb

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U-Shaped_valley,_Glen_Clova_-_geograph.org.uk_-_477230.jpg?uselang=en-gb

One of these valleys was eroded out by aglacier. Describe the shapes of the two valleysand suggest reasons for the difference.

Gwen and James Anderson

Rudi Winter

Hummocky moraine in north-west Scotland

Describe the shape of the piles of rocky debris in the photograph. Why do you thinkthis can be interpreted as the work of glacier ice rather than of running water?

DEA

Whistler, British Columbia, Canada

What evidence is there in this photo that glaciers extended further down the mountain slopes in the past?

DEA

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Snowdonia#mediaviewer/File:Snowdon_massif.jpg

What evidence is there in this photo that this area used to have glaciers?

Snowdonia, north Wales