Kettle
A kettle (of English “cauldron”) or a sölle is a training glacial in the form of depression in drifts, more or less circular and sometimes filled with water. They besides are sometimes called “glacial dolines”.
The kettles are not rare in the the Alps but they are located in general in forest.
One should not confuse kettles and Pingo S.
There exist two types of kettles.
Kettles of the first type
These kettles meets downstream from the face of the Glacier.Contrary to their form comparable with a Doline, the kettle results from a deposit. When the face of a glacier is covered with a great quantity of materials (of the stones of all sizes in general but sometimes of the ground, lava, etc), it happens that part of the ice is found isolated from the remainder of the glacier, protected by the materials which recovers it.
Often, from the fluvio-glacial deposits comes to surround the cluster of ice, drowning it under layers of sediment which can reach several meters thickness. The ice, protected from the external weather conditions, can remain thus during millenia.
When the ice manages to melt, the vacuum created causes the collapse of the grounds located above which then take the form of a depression in funnel which can fill of water.
The kettles can initially have variable sizes according to the volume of ice emprisonné : of a few tens of centimetres to several hundred meters in diameter.
From their morphology (in depression) and their site (in valleys), the kettles are quickly subjected to filling by contribution of sediments. Thus one in general finds kettles only between the face of the glacier and the terminal moraine. One will be able then to be astonished to find in less frequent cases of the kettles downstream from the terminal moraine. Their formation could be caused by Surge S or Jökulhlaup S which leave few visible traces in the landscape except kettles or erratic blocks.
Kettles of the second type
These kettles is formed not downstream from the glacial face but on the glacier itself.A glacier can be covered with a more or less important layer of remains coming from the fall falling uninterrupted on the glacier. Following a particular phenomenon (a fall of Serac of a suspended tributary glacier or a jökulhlaup), the glacier can have to receive large blocks of ice on its surface which come to be enchased in the stone mass. These blocks of ice, not covered by remains, found more quickly than the subjacent ice and give rise to depressions.
Contrary to the kettles of the first type, those of the second type are dedicated to disappear when the glacier melts and that the remains recovering it will be altered to form a moraine.
See too
Related articles
External bonds
- Origin of the kettles
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