The largest glacier, by area, is the Seller Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula, measuring over 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles). The largest ice crystals that make up a glacier can be as large as apples. However, there are many other ice masses on Earth that are much larger than the largest glacier.

The Taylor Glacier is an Antarctic glacier about 54 kilometers (34 miles) long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land into the western end of Taylor Valley. — Credit: Eli Duke/Flickr. Valley commonly originate from mountain glaciers or icefields, these glaciers spill down valleys, looking much like giant tongues.

What is a glacier? A glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land. At higher elevations, more snow typically falls than melts, adding to its mass. Eventually, the surplus of built-up ice begins to flow downhill. At lower elevations, there is usually a higher rate of melt or icebergs break off that removes ice mass.

Glacier melt delivers nutrients into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Those nutrients can drive blooms of phytoplankton—the base of aquatic and marine food chains. Meanwhile, gradual glacier melt sustains stream habitats for plants and animals. So, glaciers often have an indirect impact on wildlife and fisheries.

(1) young, granular snow that has been partially melted, refrozen and compacted; névé that survives a full season is called firn; firn becomes glacial ice; (2) also refers to the accumulation zone of a glacier.

The glacier database includes measurements of glacier geometry, glacier area, snowlines, supraglacial lakes and rock debris, and other glacial attributes, as well as browse images. The collection includes data from approximately 70 percent of the world's 200,000 glaciers, and new glaciers are continually added.

This data set captures changes in glacier covered area across the state of Alaska for the period 1985 to 2020.The data set includes 18 biannual shapefiles each for overall glacier covered area, supraglacial debris area, and debris-free glacier covered area.

You can search the entire WGI by glacier id, glacier name, or latitude/longitude (as well as other parameters) using the main Search Inventory interface. You can also search using the Extract Selected Regions interface. 1.2 Background The history of systematic glacier monitoring on a large scale began in 1894, with the establishment

glacier a mass of ice that originates on land, usually having an area larger than one tenth of a square kilometer; many believe that a glacier must show some type of movement; others believe that a glacier can show evidence of past or present movement.

Data Access: Yearly and Composite Glacier Velocities. Layer: Glacier Velocity Mosaic. Layer: World Imagery