It seems obvious. A big scouring river of ice, like a more normal river, is going to carry and move things as it bulls its way along. Of course, since glaciers move slower, and have a lot more mass concentrated in one place, glaciers can really markedly affect a terrain in a way much more visible than an ordinary river, excepting something like the Grand Canyon.
Glacial Valleys, on the other hand are different. The glacier's weight, and scouring actions, causes steep sided valley walls, and very flat bottoms. This produces a u-shaped valley, and it is one of the biggest signs, even in areas without glaciers anymore, that a glacier has been there in the distant past. A fjord, for example, is a coastal glacial valley which reaches the sea, and thus becomes flooded with ocean water when the glacier retreats. While Norway is most famous for its fjords, fjords are also common right here in the United States, in Alaska.
This glacial erosion, when it occurs on mountains, produces some of the remarkable natural features that draw people to see them, above and beyond the river of ice itself.
Cirques are features where the side of the mountain has been scooped out, like a giant ice cream scoop has been taken to it. These cirques often feature a lake in them called a tarn.
Hanging Valleys are features where 2 or more glaciated or formerly valleys intersect at different elevations...and you often can get waterfalls from the higher to the lower valley.
Glacial Erratics are large rocks carried by the Glacier, and dropped unceremoniously when the Glacier melts back. These are much more noticable because of their greater size in the case of Continential Glaciation, but Alpine Glaciers can carry them as well. The scooping out of rocks by splitting and pulling at it is called plucking.
Rock Flour is pulverized rock and other material, which winds up in the meltwater streams which often flow out of the terminus of a glacier. This material discolors the water to a distinctive milky white color.
Till is just deposited material from a glacier over an area. A rocky, heterogenous mixture of stuff, it is also remarkably difficult to do much with, from Man's standpoint anyway. Much of Washington State is buried in this sort of material.
Moraines are much more regularized deposited material from a glacier, relating to its movement. Lateral Moraines are material deposited laterally from the forward movement of the glacier, that is along its sides. A medial moraine is a ridge of material marking the center of a former glacier, especially noticeable in glaciers which are confluent. Terminal Moraines are piles of material dropped by the glacier at its terminus, and these terminal moraines therefore mark the furthest advance of a glacier. A glacier in retreat, therefore, will show a series of recessional moraines, showing spots where its length stabilized for periods of time.
Melted chunks of ice left by a retreating glacier can often form kettle lakes. Given the right rainfall conditions, these lakes can be transient, or remain permanently. Glaciers can also forms hills called eskers and drumlins. The former are winding affairs from streams on or under a glacier, the latter are teardrop shaped affairs. In fact, while almost every American schoolchild learned of Bunker Hill, what you may not know is that Bunker Hill is a drumlin created by continential glaciation!
Where Glaciers do not carve out, or carry away, they can instead wear away hard rock...polishing it, or causing cracks and grooves called striations.
As you will see, just like in the case of Alpine Glaciers, Continential Glaciers leave some tell tale geologic fingerprints to show where they have been. Like Alpine Glaciers, Continential Glaciers show their even more pronounced Terminal Moraines. From the various Terminal Moraines, geologists are able to tell how many episodes of continental glaciation occur, and how far they progressed.
Again, like Alpine Glaciers, Continental glaciers leave lakes...of considerably larger size. The Great Lakes, for example, are legacies of the massive ice sheets which covered the northern hemisphere. Many of the major river valleys of our continent, like the Ohio, Mississippi and Hudson, owe their path, and their existance to the ice sheets as well. As mentioned before, Glacial erratics in the case of continential glaciers can be truly large, distinctive, and noticeable.
Outwash Plains are similar to till, but has been sorted by meltwater action and can cover wide areas...thousands of square miles! Terraces levels in the outwash plains indicate that there were 4 major periods of glaciation in the last Ice Age.
 Matterhorn |
Mendenhall Glacier |
Classic U-Shaped Valley (Monarch Pass) |
Hanging Valley, With Waterfall (YellowStone N.P.) |
Lateral and Medial Moraines |
Cirque in Grand Tetons National Park |
A Glacial Erratic, YellowStone National Park |
The Fjords of Norway |
A tidewater glacier, Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay N.P., Alaska. |