Ice Scour
When floating ice features (typically an iceberg or sea ice) drift into shallower waters, their keel may come into contact with the seabed. As they keep drifting, they produce long, narrow furrows most often called gouges, or scours (Wadhams 2000, p. 72, Weeks 2010, ch. 13). This phenomenon is common in offshore environments where ice is known to exist. Although it also occurs in rivers and lakes (Noble and Comfort 1982, Grass 1984), this phenomenon appears to be better documented from oceans and sea expanses.
Gouges produced via this mechanism should not be confused with strudel scours. These results from spring run-off water flowing onto the surface of a given sea ice expanse, which eventually drains away through cracks, seal breathing holes, etc. When that happens at shallow water depths, the resulting turbulence generates a depression into the seafloor (Abdalla et al. 2008, Fig. 5). Seabed scouring by ice should also be distinguished from another scouring mechanism: the erosion of the sediments around a structure due to water currents, a well known issue in ocean engineering and river hydraulics (e.g. Annandale 2006) – see bridge scour.
Read more about Ice Scour: Historical Perspective and Relevance, Seabed Survey For Gouges, Gouge Characteristics, The Ice Features, Arctic Offshore Oil & Gas
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or scour:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,
Through funeral parlors and honky-tonks.
From river to river you comb the town
For a place to lay your family down.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)