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Landforms

Cirque

Glaciers and Ice Sheets

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A bowl-shaped hollow with steep walls on three sides, carved into a mountainside at the head of a glacial valley by the rotational erosion of a small mountain glacier. A cirque often holds a small lake, called a tarn, once the glacier that carved it has melted away, and the erosion of cirques back-to-back is what carves sharp aretes and pyramidal peaks.

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