kame
Sign in to savethumb|A kame near Kirriemuir, Scotland thumb|A kame in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming thumb|A kame among the glacial drift on the [[terminal moraine of the Okanagan Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet on the Waterville Plateau of the Columbia Plateau in Washington]] A kame, or knob, is a glacial landform, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier, and is then deposited on the land surface with further melting of the glacier. Kames are often associated with kettles, and this is referred to as kame and kettle
Article
3 sectionsContents
- Examples
- See also
- References
thumb|A kame near Kirriemuir, Scotland thumb|A kame in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming thumb|A kame among the glacial drift on the [[terminal moraine of the Okanagan Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet on the Waterville Plateau of the Columbia Plateau in Washington]] A kame, or knob, is a glacial landform, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier, and is then deposited on the land surface with further melting of the glacier. Kames are often associated with kettles, and this is referred to as kame and kettle or knob and kettle topography. The word kame is a variant of comb (, or is the Old Scottish word meaning 'comb'), which has the meaning "crest" among others. The geological term was introduced by Thomas Jamieson in 1874.
According to White, "kames were formed by meltwater which deposited more or less washed material at irregular places in and along melting ice. At places the material is very well washed and stratified; at others it is more poorly washed, with inclusions of till masses that fell from ice but were covered before they were completely washed. Kame gravels thus tend to be variable and range from fine to coarse grained and even to cobbly and boulder."