Browse "Land Features"

Wind erosion processes consist of abrasion, the scouring of exposed surfaces by the sand-blasting action of wind-borne material; and deflation, the removal of sand-sized and smaller particles by the wind.

The Canadian Shield refers to the exposed portion of the continental crust underlying the majority of North America. The crust, also known as the North American Craton, extends from northern Mexico to Greenland and consists of hard rocks at least 1 billion years old. With the exception of the Canadian Shield, the rocks of the North American Craton are buried deep within the continent and covered by soil and other material. At 5 million km2, the Shield makes up roughly 50 per cent of Canada’s land mass. Shaped like a horseshoe — or the shields carried during hand-to-hand combat — the Canadian Shield extends from Labrador in the east to include nearly all of Québec, much of Ontario and Manitoba, the northern portion of Saskatchewan, the northeast corner of Alberta, much of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut and into the Arctic Archipelago. (It also reaches into parts of the United States, in New York, Wisconsin and Minnesota.) While at times a barrier to settlement, the Shield has also yielded great resources, including minerals, coniferous forests and the capacity for hydroelectric developments.

The Cassiar District lies in British Columbia's northwest corner; it historically encompasses the Stikine and Dease River watersheds and that of the upper Taku, NASS and Kechika.

Origins Lava tube caves, an important minor class, are formed by channelled outflow of molten lava in congealing flows. Sea caves most commonly result from erosion by waves.

The Columbia Icefield is a mass of ice covering a high plateau between Mount Columbia (3747 m), the highest point in Alberta, and Mount Athabasca (3491 m), located between Banff and Jasper national parks, along the BC-Alberta border.

Drumlin, smooth, half egg-shaped or ellipsoidal hill which formed beneath Quaternary GLACIERS. Drumlins [Gaelic druim, "hill"] were first described in Ireland. They lie parallel to the direction of ice movement, the blunt (stoss) end facing up-glacier, the lee sloping down-glacier.

An esker is a ridge (Gaelic eiscir, "ridge") of gravel and sand emplaced during glacial melt by the deposition of sediments from meltwater rivers flowing on the ice (channel fills) or beneath a glacier (tunnel fills).

In oceanographic terminology, fjords are estuaries, ie, semienclosed bodies of water in which seawater is measurably diluted by fresh water from land drainage.

The Fraser River Canyon was formed during the Miocene period (22.9-5.33 million years ago) when the river cut down into the uplifting southern part of the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. The canyon characteristics of this

A glacier is a large mass of ice, formed at least in part on land, that shows evidence of present or past movement. It is formed by the compaction and recrystallization of snow into ice crystals and commonly also contains air, water and rock debris. With approximately 200,000 km2 of glacier coverage in the Arctic and the West, Canada is home to a significant percentage of the world’s glaciers. By 2100, however, scientists predict that those in Alberta and British Columbia will have lost 70 per cent of their 2005 volume due to climate change.

Hells Gate is a narrow rocky gorge of the Fraser River Canyon south of Boston Bar, British Columbia.

​Ice caps are large masses of ice that rest on land and cover most of the underlying landscape.

Early formed, dense crystals may separate from the magma, causing a change in the composition of the residual melt.

A karst landform is a geological feature created on the earth's surface by the drainage of water into the ground.

Lake Agassiz was the largest glacial lake in North America. It was formed 11 500 years ago in front of the northeastwardly retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet, which acted as a dam.

Earth's surface experiences change driven by relief, sea level, hydroclimate and human activity. Extreme hydroclimatic events combined with human activity on steep slopes and/or adjacent to low-lying coasts generate natural hazards.

Landform Regions, see PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS.

A landslide is a downward and outward movement of a soil mass that formed part of a slope.

Metamorphic rock is one of the 3 major classes of rock comprising the Earth's crust, the others being SEDIMENTARY and IGNEOUS ROCKS. Metamorphic rock has been transformed, while in the solid state, by pressure, temperature and deformation.

 The solar system contains many objects smaller than the planets (or their satellites) travelling in individual orbits about the SUN; space between the planets also contains myriad dust grains in the micron size range.