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:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“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)