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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Glacial sediments are formed in association with glacier ice in subglacial, ice marginal, lacustrine and marine environments. In such diverse environments, sediment can be reworked and deposited by a very wide range of processes, including subglacial lodgement, deformation and melt-out, subaerial and subaqueous mass-movements, fluvial processes, and settling through a water column. Numerous attempts have been made to classify the resulting range of sediments in schemes of greater or lesser complexity (Dreimanis, 1989), incorporating many varieties of “till” (e.g., flow till, lowered till, waterlain till, iceberg till). Many of these proposed sediment types are difficult to distinguish in the field, however, and a simple classification scheme is now favored by most workers. A fundamental distinction can be made between primary glaciogenic deposits, formed by exclusively glacial processes (such as subglacial lodgement, melt-out and deformation), and secondary deposits, formed by the...

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Bibliography

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag

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Benn, D.I. (2009). Glacial Sediments. In: Gornitz, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4411-3_95

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