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Inlandsis

An inlandsis is a layer or sheet of ice, an extended continental glacier, that is more commonly known as an Ice Sheet, and will herein be refered to as such.  The term is of Danish origin and littleraly means ice from the interior or ice from the backland.An ice sheet is considered to be glacier that is larger than 50,000 square kilometers. There are currently two ice sheets: the Greenland Ice sheet from which the name is derived, and the Antarctic ice sheet (sometimes divided in two with the west Antarctic on one side and the east Antarctic on the other). The formation of ice sheets is the same as for glaciers: an accumulation of snow resulting from insufficient melting provokes the snow to be squeezed which expulses the air that it holds and transforms it into ice. This ice is plastic enough to bend to gravity or its own weight. In the case of the ice sheet, it is its own weight that provokes its displacement by sliding, since the gradient on the scale of a continent or a large island is too small to provoke a gravitational flow. A balance between snow provision (weight of the ice) and snow removal (melting, iceberg calving) happens, and the mass of ice balances out its thickness and length. An ice sheet maintains itself more by a slight removal than by strong provision. Ice sheets retain 98% of the planet’s fresh water supply.

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