When an alpine glacier moves away from the firn basin, the ice body looks like a tongue, so it is called a glacier tongue, and the associated scenery is called a glacier tongue landscape. The glacier tongue is roughly equivalent to the ablation area and is the most active section. It contains water flows and crevasses on the surface and ice caves, ice stalactites and subterranean glacial rivers inside the ice body. The front part of a glacier tongue changes according to the supply of snow and the ablation rate, and the advance and retreat of the glacier also depends on these changes (Fig. 17).
Glacier tongue landscape of a modern glacier at Yuzhu Peak, Qinghai Province
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(2020). Glacier Tongue Landscape. In: Chen, A., Ng, Y., Zhang, E., Tian, M. (eds) Dictionary of Geotourism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2538-0_917
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