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Smith Glacier
Smith Glacier is a low-gradient Antarctic glacier, over 160 km (100 mi) long, draining from Toney Mountain in an ENE direction to Amundsen Sea. A northern distributary, Kohler Glacier, drains to Dotson Ice Shelf but the main flow passes to the sea between Bear Peninsula and Mount Murphy, terminating at Crosson Ice Shelf. The Smith Glacier is located in the western region of Antarctica. Latitude: 75° 2' 59'' S. Longitude 111° 12' 0'' W. Mapped by USGS from ground surveys and USN air photos, 1959–65. Named by US-ACAN after Philip M. Smith (Smith Bluffs), Deputy Director, Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation, who in the period 1956–71 participated in many expeditions to Antarctica in field and supervisory capacities. In 2001, Dr. Andrew Shepherd, a research fellow at the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling at University College London, said that Smith Glacier was losing mass quickly and contributing to the slow rise of the oceans. In 20 ...
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Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of . Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of . Antarctica is, on average, the coldest, driest, and windiest of the continents, and it has the highest average elevation. It is mainly a polar desert, with annual precipitation of over along the coast and far less inland. About 70% of the world's freshwater reserves are frozen in Antarctica, which, if melted, would raise global sea levels by almost . Antarctica holds the record for the lowest measured temperature on Earth, . The coastal regions can reach temperatures over in summer. Native species of animals include mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades. Where vegetation o ...
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Glacier
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as Crevasse, crevasses and Serac, seracs, as it slowly flows and deforms under stresses induced by its weight. As it moves, it abrades rock and debris from its substrate to create landforms such as cirques, moraines, or fjords. Although a glacier may flow into a body of water, it forms only on land and is distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water. On Earth, 99% of glacial ice is contained within vast ice sheets (also known as "continental glaciers") in the polar regions, but glaciers may be found in mountain ranges on every continent other than the Australian mainland, including Oceania's high-latitude oceanic island countries such as New Zealand. Between lati ...
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Toney Mountain
Toney Mountain is an elongated snow-covered shield volcano, long and rising to at Richmond Peak, located southwest of Kohler Range in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. Toney Mountain is an elongated volcanic massif that rises from a basaltic lava plateau. A wide summit caldera tops the volcano, and is elongated in east-west direction; this orientation is shared with calderas on other volcanoes in Marie Byrd Land and reflects regional tectonic stress. The slopes of the volcano feature parasitic vents and glacial corries, and are much steeper north of the volcano than south of it. Most of the mountain is covered by ice and its eastern sector may be a crater. That the mountain is mostly ice covered makes it difficult to determine its composition, the origin of the elongated shape of the volcano and the volcanological relation between the parasitic cinder cones and the main volcanic pile. Its volume may be about . The plateau and parasitic cones are formed by hawaiite and the few out ...
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Amundsen Sea
The Amundsen Sea, an arm of the Southern Ocean off Marie Byrd Land in western Antarctica, lies between Cape Flying Fish (the northwestern tip of Thurston Island) to the east and Cape Dart on Siple Island to the west. Cape Flying Fish marks the boundary between the Amundsen Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea. West of Cape Dart there is no named marginal sea of the Southern Ocean between the Amundsen and Ross Seas. The Norwegian expedition of 1928–1929 under Captain Nils Larsen named the body of water for the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen while exploring this area in February 1929. The sea is mostly ice-covered, and the Thwaites Ice Tongue protrudes into it. The ice sheet which drains into the Amundsen Sea averages about in thickness; roughly the size of the state of Texas, this area is known as the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE); it forms one of the three major ice-drainage basins of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Embayment The ice sheet which drains into the Amund ...
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Kohler Glacier
Kohler Glacier is a distributary of the Smith Glacier in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, flowing northward through the middle of the Kohler Range into Dotson Ice Shelf. It was mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey from surveys and U.S. Navy air photos, 1959–65, and was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in association with the Kohler Range. See also * List of glaciers in the Antarctic * Barter Bluff Barter Bluff is a prominent rock bluff west of Leister Peak in the Kohler Range, Marie Byrd Land. The bluff forms part of the steep wall along the east side of Kohler Glacier. It was mapped by the United States Geological Survey from surveys an ... References Glaciers of Marie Byrd Land {{MarieByrdLand-glacier-stub ...
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Dotson Ice Shelf
Dotson Ice Shelf is an ice shelf about wide between Martin Peninsula and Bear Peninsula on the coast of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica. It was first mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey from air photos obtained by U.S. Navy Operation Highjump in January 1947, and was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for Lieutenant William A. Dotson, US Navy, formerly Officer in Charge of the Ice Reconnaissance Unit of the Naval Oceanographic Office, killed in a plane crash in Alaska in November 1964 while on an ice reconnaissance mission. See also * List of glaciers * List of Antarctic ice shelves This is a list of Antarctic ice shelves. Ice shelves are attached to a large portion of the Antarctic coastline. Their total area is 1,541,700 km2. Names are also listed in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Gazetteer. The ... Further reading * David A. Lilien, Ian Joughin, Benjamin Smith, and David E. Shean, Changes in flow of Crosson and Dotson ice shelve ...
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Bear Peninsula
Bear Peninsula () is a peninsula about 80 km (50 mi) long and 40 km (25 mi) wide which is ice covered except for several isolated rock bluffs and outcrops along its margins, lying 48 km 30 mi) east of Martin Peninsula on Walgreen Coast, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. First delineated from aerial photographs taken by USN Operation Highjump in January 1947. Named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) after the ice-ship ''USS Bear'', flagship of the USAS, from which three reconnaissance flights were made in late February 1940, resulting in the discovery of Walgreen Coast (with probable sighting of this feature) and the Thurston Island area. This ship, under the name Bear of Oakland, also served as flagship of the Byrd AE, 1933–35, which based at the Bay of Whales, Ross Ice Shelf. Launched in 1874 at Greenock, Scotland, for use in the sealing trade, she sank in 30-foot seas and high winds in the North Atlantic, March 19, 1963, at which tim ...
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Mount Murphy
Mount Murphy is a massive, snow-covered and highly eroded shield volcano in Marie Byrd Land of West Antarctica with steep, rocky slopes. It is directly south of Bear Peninsula and is bounded by the Smith, Pope and Haynes Glaciers. Volcanic activity began in the Miocene with the eruption of basaltic and trachytic lava. Volcanism on the slopes of the volcano resumed much later during the Pleistocene, with a parasitic cone having been K–Ar dated to 0.9 million years old. Delineated from aerial photographs taken by US Navy Operation Highjump in January 1947. Named by US-ACAN for Robert Cushman Murphy of the American Museum of Natural History, noted authority on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic bird life. While serving on the whaler, he charted the Bay of Isles region of South Georgia. Features Bucher Peak () at , is one of the highest peaks in the west-central summit area of the Mount Murphy massif. Buettner Peak is a sharp peak rising midway along the north wall of Roos Glacier ...
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Crosson Ice Shelf
Crosson Ice Shelf () is an Antarctic ice shelf, about wide, north and northeast of Mount Murphy along the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. The ice shelf is nurtured by Smith, Pope, Vane, and Haynes Glaciers. It was mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey from surveys and from U.S. Navy air photos, 1959–66, and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for Commander W.E. Crosson, U.S. Navy, Commanding Officer of the Antarctic Construction Group during Operation Deep Freeze 1973. See also * Ice shelves of Antarctica This is a list of Antarctic ice shelves. Ice shelves are attached to a large portion of the Antarctic coastline. Their total area is 1,541,700 km2. Names are also listed in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Gazetteer. The ... References {{MarieByrdLand-geo-stub Ice shelves of Antarctica Bodies of ice of Marie Byrd Land ...
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United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization's work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The agency was founded on March 3, 1879. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior; it is that department's sole scientific agency. The USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, and Menlo Park, California. The current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is "science for a changing world". The agency's previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its hundredt ...
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Ice Stream
An ice stream is a region of fast-moving ice within an ice sheet. It is a type of glacier, a body of ice that moves under its own weight. They can move upwards of a year, and can be up to in width, and hundreds of kilometers in length. They tend to be about deep at the thickest, and constitute the majority of the ice that leaves the sheet. In Antarctica, the ice streams account for approximately 90% of the sheet's mass loss per year, and approximately 50% of the mass loss in Greenland. The shear forces cause deformation and recrystallization that drive the movement, this movement then causes topographic lows and valleys to form after all of the material in the ice sheet has been discharged. Sediment also plays an important role in flow velocity, the softer and more easily deformed the sediment present, the easier it is for flow velocity to be higher. Most ice streams contain a layer of water at the bottom, which lubricates flow and acts to increase speed. Mechanics Ice str ...
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List Of Glaciers In The Antarctic
There are many glaciers in the Antarctic. This set of lists does not include ice sheets, ice caps or ice fields, such as the Antarctic ice sheet, but includes glacial features that are defined by their flow, rather than general bodies of ice. The lists include outlet glaciers, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, tidewater glaciers and ice streams. Ice streams are a type of glacier and many of them have "glacier" in their name, e.g. Pine Island Glacier. Ice shelves are listed separately in the List of Antarctic ice shelves. For the purposes of these lists, the Antarctic is defined as any latitude further south than 60° (the continental limit according to the Antarctic Treaty System). List by letters * List of glaciers in the Antarctic: A–H * List of glaciers in the Antarctic: I–Z See also * List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands * List of Antarctic ice rises * List of Antarctic ice shelves * List of Antarctic ice streams * List of glaciers * List of subantar ...
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