Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Seracs

Should this picture be sandy brown instead of snowy white, one would be excused that he or she is on a plane looking down on the ancient citadel of Aleppo rather than the seracs on the Tasman Glacier in NZ near Mt. Cook.

Seracs (from Swiss French sérac, originally the name of a compact white cheese) are house-size blocks of glacial ice, sometimes with their own 'entrances', 'windows' and 'rooms'. They are formed by intersecting and widening crevasses on the glacier. 

Crevasses, in turn, are formed when glacial ice sheets are fractured by horizontal and vertical shearing forces when the glacier glides downstream. When these crevasses become wide enough, they form 'lanes' and 'streets'. Sometimes, snow would bridge over the tops of seracs, turning them into caves or tunnels. 



Tasman Glacier, 2015




 

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