Tarn (lake) | EPFL Graph Search

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A tarn (or corrie loch) is a mountain lake, pond or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn. The word is derived from the Old Norse word tjörn ("a small mountain lake without tributaries") meaning pond. In parts of Northern England – predominantly Cumbria (where there are 197), but also areas of North Lancashire and North Yorkshire – 'tarn' is widely used as the name for small lakes or ponds, regardless of their location and origin (e.g. Talkin Tarn, Urswick Tarn, Malham Tarn). Similarly, in Scandinavian languages, a tjern or tjørn (both Norwegian) or tjärn or tärn (both Swedish) is a small natural lake, often in a forest or with vegetation closely surrounding it or growing into the tarn. The specific technical use for a body of water in a glacial corrie comes from high number of tarns found in corries in the Lake District, an upland area in Cumbria. Nonetheless, there are many more bodies of water called 'tarn' in the Lake District than actually fit this technical use. Tarns are the result of small glaciers called cirque glaciers. Glacial cirques (or 'corries') form as hollows on mountainsides near the firn line. Eventually, the hollow in which a cirque glacier develops may become a large bowl shape in the side of the mountain, caused by weathering, by ice segregation, and as well as being eroded by plucking. The basin will become deeper as it continues to be eroded by ice segregation and abrasion. A cirque typically will be partially surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, with a fourth side a form of moraine constructed from glacial till, which forms the lip, threshold or sill, from which either a stream or glacier will flow away from the cirque. Tarns form from the melting of the cirque glacier. They may either be seasonal features as supraglacial lakes, or permanent features which form in the hollows left by cirques in formerly glaciated areas. File:Adirondack Mountains, N.Y.- Lake Tear of the Clouds by Stoddard, Seneca Ray.

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Related concepts (4)

Tarn (lake)

Cirque

A cirque (siʁk; from the Latin word circus) is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from coire, meaning a pot or cauldron) and cwm; kʊm). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform arising from fluvial erosion. The concave shape of a glacial cirque is open on the downhill side, while the cupped section is generally steep. Cliff-like slopes, down which ice and glaciated debris combine and converge, form the three or more higher sides.

Cumbria

Cumbria (ˈkʌmbriə ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancashire to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. Its largest settlement is the city of Carlisle. The county is predominantly rural, with an area of and a population of 500,012; this makes it the third largest ceremonial county in England by area but the eighth-smallest by population.