Periglacial Environments: These are like the cool cousins of glaciers! They're found hanging around the edges of glaciers and ice masses. Imagine a big, chilly place where the ground is frozen deep, and the rocks look like they've been to a rock party and come out all fractured and angular.

• Arctic Continental: Super cold, all the time!
• Alpine: Mountains + cold = Alpine.
• Arctic Maritime: Near Arctic oceans; it's cold, but not that cold.

Each type has its own unique temperature range, dictating the intensity and frequency of periglacial processes.

Freeze-Thaw Weathering

Ever put a soda can in the freezer and forget about it? When water freezes, it expands (like the exploding soda can), breaking rocks into angular fragments called "scree."

Mass Movements

• Solifluction: "Flowing soil" (Think: soil + flux). In winter, ice freezes and expands the soil. In spring, it melts, water flows downhill, and carries soil particles, forming U-shaped lobes or terracettes.
• Frost Creep: A sneaky type of solifluction. Imagine the soil particles doing the "wave" at a sports game; they rise up with frost and slide down with the thaw.
• Rockfalls: Big rocks say goodbye to cliff faces, often due to freeze-thaw weathering.

Permafrost

Permafrost = permanent frost. It's like a never-melting popsicle in the ground!

• Continuous: Really cold places (-5° to -50°C).
• Discontinuous: Kinda cold places (-1.5° to -5°C).
• Sporadic: Sometimes cold places (0° to -1.5°C).

Above this frosty layer is the "active layer," which thaws and has intense mass movements. It's thicker in some places and thinner in others, depending on various factors like latitude, rock type, and vegetation cover.

Pingos

Think of a pingo like a massive, ice-cold zit on the Earth's face. They're conical hills formed from freezing water under pressure. There are two types:

• Open-system: Water source is distant.
• Closed-system: Water source is local.

Thermokarst

A landscape like a bad baking experiment, all lumpy and hollow. It's caused by the melting of permafrost due to things like climate change or fire.

Patterned Ground

This is the Earth trying to be artistic with stone stripes, polygons, and garlands. It's created by processes like frost heave and solifluction.