Land Features | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Aeolian Landform

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.

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Cassiar District

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.

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Cave

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.

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Columbia Icefield

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.

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Drumlin

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.

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Esker

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).

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Fjord

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

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Saguenay River Fjord

The Saguenay Fjord was carved out near the very edge of the North American continental ice sheet. This fjord has the very rare characteristic of being intracontinental.

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Fraser River Canyon

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

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Glaciers in Canada

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.

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Hells Gate

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

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Ice Cap

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

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Igneous Rock

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

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Meteors, Meteorites and Impact Craters

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. Near Earth, dust concentrations are only a few hundred particles per cubic kilometre, but 35 000 to 100 000 t of extraterrestrial material enters the atmosphere annually, swept up by our planet from debris that is in its path or crosses its path.

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