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Glossary of Terms Used on Surficial Geology Maps
compiled by John Gosse and Woodrow Thompson
Note: Terms shown in italics are defined elsewhere in the glossary.
Ablation till: till formed by release of sedimentary debris from melting glacial ice, accompanied by variable amounts of slumping and meltwater action. May be loose and stony, and contains lenses of washed sand and gravel.
Basal melt-out till: till resulting from melting of debris-rich ice in the bottom part of a glacier. Generally shows crude stratification due to included sand and gravel lenses.
Clast: pebble-, cobble-, or boulder-size fragment of rock or other material in a finer-grained matrix. Often refers to stones in glacial till or gravel.
Clast-supported: refers to sediment that consists mostly or entirely of clasts, generally with more than 40% clasts. Usually the clasts are in contact with each other. For example, a well-sorted cobble gravel.
Delta: a body of sand and gravel deposited where a stream enters a lake or ocean and drops its sediment load. Glacially deposited deltas in Maine usually consist of two parts: (1) coarse, horizontal, often gravelly topset beds deposited in stream channels on the flat delta top, and (2) underlying, finer-grained, inclined foreset beds deposited on the advancing delta front.
Deposit: general term for any accumulation of sediment, rocks, or other earth materials.
Diamicton: any poorly-sorted sediment, containing a wide range of particle sizes, e.g. glacial till.
Drumlin: an elongate oval-shaped hill, often composed of glacial sediments, that has been shaped by the flow of glacial ice, such that its long axis is parallel to the direction of ice flow.
End moraine: a ridge of sediment deposited at the margin of a glacier. Usually consists of till and/or sand and gravel in various proportions.
Englacial: occurring or formed within glacial ice.
Eolian: formed by wind action, such as a sand dune.
Esker: a ridge of sand and gravel deposited at least partly by meltwater flowing in a tunnel within or beneath glacial ice. Many ridges mapped as eskers include variable amounts of sediment deposited in narrow open channels or at the mouths of ice tunnels.
Fluvial: Formed by running water, for example by meltwater streams discharging from a glacier.
Glaciolacustrine: refers to sediments or processes involving a lake which received meltwater from glacial ice.
Glaciomarine: refers to sediments and processes related to environments where marine water and glacial ice were in contact.
Head of outwash: same as outwash head.
Holocene: term for the time period from 10,000 years ago to the present. It is often used synonymously with "postglacial" because most of New England has been free of glacial ice since that time.
Ice age: see Pleistocene.
Ice-contact: refers to any sedimentary deposit or other feature that formed adjacent to glacial ice. Many such deposits show irregular topography due to melting of the ice against which they were laid down, and resulting collapse.
Kettle: a depression on the ground surface, ranging in outline from circular to very irregular, left by the melting of a mass of glacial ice that had been surrounded by glacial sediments. Many kettles now contain ponds or wetlands.
Kettle hole: same as kettle.
Lacustrine: pertaining to a lake.
Late-glacial: refers to the time when the most recent glacial ice sheet was receding from Maine, approximately 15,000-10,000 years ago.
Late Wisconsinan: the most recent part of Pleistocene time, during which the latest continental ice sheet covered all or portions of New England (approx. 25,000-10,000 years ago).
Lodgement till: very dense variety of till, deposited beneath flowing glacial ice. May be known locally as "hardpan."
Matrix: the fine-grained material, generally silt and sand, which comprises the bulk of many sediments and may contain clasts.
Matrix-supported: refers to any sediment that consists mostly or entirely of a fine-grained component such as silt or sand. Generally contains less than 20-30% clasts, which are not in contact with one another. For example, a fine sand with scattered pebbles.
Moraine: General term for glacially deposited sediment, but often used as short form of "end moraine."
Morphosequence: a group of water-laid glacial deposits (often consisting of sand and gravel) that were deposited more-or-less at the same time by meltwater streams issuing from a particular position of a glacier margin. The depositional pattern of each morphosequence was usually controlled by a local base level, such as a lake level, to which the sediments were transported.
Outwash: sediment derived from melting glacial ice, and deposited by meltwater streams in front of a glacier.
Outwash head: the end of an outwash deposit that was closest to the glacier margin from which it originated. Ice-contact outwash heads typically show steep slopes, kettles and hummocks, and/or boulders dumped off the ice. These features help define former positions of a retreating glacier margin, especially where end moraines are absent.
Pleistocene: term for the time period between 2-3 million years ago and 10,000 years ago, during which there were several glaciations. Also called the "Ice Age."
Proglacial: occurring or formed in front of a glacier.
Quaternary: term for the era between 2-3 million years ago and the present. Includes both the Pleistocene and Holocene.
Striation: a narrow scratch on bedrock or a stone, produced by the abrasive action of debris-laden glacial ice. Plural form sometimes given as "striae."
Subaqueous fan: a somewhat fan-shaped deposit of sand and gravel that was formed by meltwater streams entering a lake or ocean at the margin of a glacier. Similar to a delta, but was not built up to the water surface.
Subglacial: occurring or formed beneath a glacier.
Till: a heterogeneous, usually non-stratified sediment deposited directly from glacial ice. Particle size may range from clay through silt, sand, and gravel to large boulders.
Topset/foreset contact: the more-or-less horizontal boundary between topset and foreset beds in a delta. This boundary closely approximates the water level of the lake or ocean into which the delta was built.
Last updated on October 6, 2005