Back to photostream

Galtymore summit & Lough Curra (corrie)

From Wikipedia:

A cirque (French for "circus") is an amphitheatre-like valley, or valley head, formed at the head of a glacier by erosion. A cirque also is known as a coombe or coomb in England, a combe or comb in America, a corrie (coire) in Scotland and Ireland, and a cwm in Wales, although these terms apply to a specific feature of which several may be found in a cirque.

 

A cirque is a landform found among mountains as a result of alpine glaciers. They may be up to a square kilometre in size, situated high on a mountainside near the firn line, and typically are partially surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. The highest cliff often is called a headwall. The fourth side is the "lip," the side at which the glacier flowed away from the cirque. Many glacial cirques contain tarns dammed by either till (debris) or a bedrock threshold.

 

As glaciers can only originate above the snowline, studying the location of present day cirques provides information on past glaciations patterns and climate change.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque

 

 

5,636 views
9 faves
12 comments
Uploaded on June 22, 2009
Taken on June 10, 2009