Whats the diffrence between ice sheets and glaciers?

Question

give me a defentition for each and tell me the diffrences please
(no wikipedia sites,my computer blocks wikipedia somehow)
Ill be looking for a best answer:D

Answer 1

Ice sheets are really big glaciers (>50,000 km^2). Currently, there are only two: the Greenland and Antarctica Ice Sheets.

Answer 2

Ice Sheets cover continental landmasses.. such as Antarctica and Greenland. Ice sheets can be (on earth) up to two miles thick. Glaciers are smaller more mobile ice features. A glacier usually forms high on a mountain side where snow accumulation exceeds the rate at which it melts. As the depth of the snow increases it is compressed into ice which under great pressure begins to flow down the mountain. When the glacier gets to a point where annual melting exceeds the rate of accumulation it dwindles and stops. There are glaciers which come out of Ice sheets as well.

Answer 3

Ice sheets and ice caps are a type of glacier only. Actually glaciers which spread over their supply areas are called ice sheets and ice caps. Greenland and Antarctica are the only example of Continental Ice Sheets, but smaller ice caps (jokulls) cover considerable areas of Iceland and Spitzbergen.
The other types of glaciers are 1) Mountain or Valley or Alpine Glaciers, having their source lying in that part of the mountain range above snow line. and 2) Piedmont Glaciers, which develop when valley glaciers emerge from their channels and spread out over a low land area.
If you want to know the difference between a valley glacier and an ice sheet, it is in the direction of their movement. While Valley Glaciers are confined to a path directing their movement, an Ice Sheet extends as a continuous sheet, moving outward in all directions.

Answer 4

An ice sheet is commonly referred to as a continental glacier, and your 'glacier' is probably what we glacial geologists call valley glaciers.

Valley glaciers start at high elevations in mountain ranges in basins (either nivation hollows or cirques). They are much smaller than ice sheets (or continental glaciers). They flow in one direction--down a valley. A valley glacier is what most people think of when they hear the word glacier. It is typically thought of as a long, winding "river" of ice that flows down valleys in mountain ranges. The Matanuska, Columbia, Mendenhall, and Malaspina are all examples of valley glaciers in Alaska. The Teton Glacier is a small cirque glacier in the Tetons in Wyoming. The Fox and Franz Josef are valley glaciers in New Zealand. Khumbu Glacier in the Himalayas. Google any of them to get photos.

Ice sheets cover large expanses of land. They can cap an entire mountain range, or they can cover much of a continent (the last ice sheet in North America originated in the Arctic and extended as far south as Wisconsin/Illinois/Pennsylvania/New York/Cape Cod). They flow radially, away from their center (like a pancake). The West and East Antarctic Ice Sheets are examples, as is the Greenland Ice Sheet. In the past, ice sheets have covered large expanses of land in the northern hemisphere--the main North American ice sheet was called the Laurentide.

For the most part, the two create similar landforms (moraines, etc), but valley glaciers are not known to really produce drumlins or significant eskers. Continental glaciers do not form aretes, horns, etc that valley glaciers do.

In general you can make the argument that valley glaciers create more relief (by eroding their headwalls and valleys deeper), whereas continental glaciers generally smooth topography (by eroding all land beneath them).

An interesting point is that some ice sheets have outlet valley glaciers. For example, much of Greenlands ice sheet spills out through fjords on the coast by fast moving ice streams, or valley glaciers. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet spills out to the Ross Embayment through the Transantarctic Mountains through valley glaciers like the Ferrar Glacier, Reeves Glacier, and David Glacier.

Answer 5

an ice sheet is something on your porch,a glacier is sometimes miles thick,cause by ice ages..