GENERAL GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -An ice sheet is a mass of glacial ice more than 50, 000 square kilometers (19, 000 square miles). Ice sheets contain about 99% of the freshwater on Earth, and are sometimes called continental glaciers. As ice sheets extend to the coast and over the ocean, they become ice shelves.

Detailed explanation-2: -Continental glaciers cover vast areas of land in extreme polar regions, including Antarctica and Greenland (Figure 16.7).

Detailed explanation-3: -A continuous sheet of land ice that covers a very large area and moves outward in many directions. This type of ice mass is so thick as to mask the land surface contours, in contrast to the smaller and thinner highland ice. The continental glacier of Greenland is sometimes called the Inland Ice.

Detailed explanation-4: -Ice sheets are vast areas of glacial ice that smother the landscape and even extend over the ocean as ice shelves. Continental ice sheets are the largest glaciers. They now occur only in Greenland and Antarctica.

Detailed explanation-5: -Two great ice masses, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, stand out in the world today and may be similar in many respects to the large Pleistocene ice sheets. About 99 percent of the world’s glacier ice is in these two ice masses, 91 percent in Antarctica alone.