Corrie Formation

Rotational sliding and friction

Lochan and example

Erosion

Conditions

Freeze-thaw and bergschrund

  • Plucking is when ice freezes on to bedrock
  • pulling loose rock away from the landscape, making it steeper.
  • Abrasion is when the angular rock embeded in the ice
  • grinds the landscape making it deepers
  • Snow accumulates in north facing mountain hollows
  • when more snow falls in winter than melts in the summer.
  • Freeze thaw weathering on the backwall supplies further abrasion material helping to further deepen the corrie
  • The scree falls into the bergschrund which is large crevasse separating moving ice from ice still attached to the back wall
  • Rotational sliding deepens the hollow floor as gravity causes the ice to move and melt water from the glacier helping it to slide.
  • The lip traps water as it melts, leaving a lochan
  • e.g corrie cas, carirngorms.
  • freeze thaw weathering when water in cracks in the rock freezes, expands and contracts weakening the rock until fragments break off.