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Ice Field


An ice field (also spelled icefield) is an area less than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) of ice often found in the colder climates and higher altitudes of the world where there is sufficient precipitation. It is an extensive area of interconnected valley glaciers from which the higher peaks rise as nunataks. Ice fields are larger than alpine glaciers, smaller than ice sheets and similar in area to ice caps. The topography of ice fields is determined by the shape of the surrounding land forms, while ice caps have their own forms overriding underlying shapes.

Ice fields are formed by a large accumulation of snow which, through years of compression and freezing, turns into ice. Due to ice’s susceptibility to gravity, ice fields usually form over large areas that are basins or atop plateaus, thus allowing a continuum of ice to form over the landscape uninterrupted by glacial channels. Glaciers often form on the edges of ice fields, serving as gravity-propelled drains off the ice field which is in turn replenished by snowfall.

While an ice cap is not constrained by topography, an ice field is. An ice field is also distinguishable from an ice cap because it does not have a dome-like form.

There are several ice fields in the Himalayas and Altay Mountains (the border range between the Central Asian Republics and China). One unexpected ice field is located in Yolyn Am, a mountain valley located in the northern end of the Gobi Desert.

There are no ice fields in Australia.

New Zealand has

Reference:

The only large ice fields in mainland Europe are in Norway (e.g., Dovre and Jotunheimen). There are several dozen small ice fields in the Alps and tiny remnants of permanent ice in Sweden, the Apennines, the Pyrenees and the Balkans. Since the disappearance of the last remaining ice field in Andalucía, with the disappearance of the Corral del Veleta glacier in 1913, the southernmost surviving permanent ice field in continental Europe is Snezhnika in Bulgaria.


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