BIOPHYSICAL HABITAT MAPPING: A mapping system that integrates those elements of the natural environment that are relevant to wildlife, including terrain, soils, and vegetation.
BIOTERRAIN MAPPING: Terrain mapping with criteria slightly modified to emphasize or include those elements of the landscape that are relevant to wildlife habitat, such as soil moisture conditions, aspect, and vegetation characteristics.
BLANKET*: A mantle of surficial material, thicker than about 1 metre, that reflects the topography of the bedrock or older surficial material upon which it rests although minor details of that topography may be masked*.
BLOCKS: Angular rock fragments with intermediate diameter greater than 256 mm.
BLOCKFIELD: A level or gently sloping area covered with blocks derived from underlying bedrock or drift by weathering and/or frost heave, and having undergone no significant downslope movement; characteristic of periglacial regions.
BLOWOUT: A general term for a small saucer-, cup-, or trough-shaped hollow or depression formed by wind erosion on a pre-existing dune or other sand deposit.
BLUFF: A steep, precipitous slope of great lateral extent compared to its height.
BOREHOLE: A hole drilled into the earth, commonly to great depth, as a prospective well for water or oil, of for exploratory purposes.
BOULDER: (i) A rock fragment larger than 256 mm intermediate diameter (Wentworth scale). (ii) Somewhat rounded rock fragment larger than 256 mm intermediate diameter*.
BRAIDING CHANNEL: Refers to streams where the active channel zone is occupied by many diverging and converging channels separated by bars. ("Bars" are largely unvegetated, temporary deposits of sand and gravel.)
BULK DENSITY: The weight of material per unit volume (including pore spaces); commonly applied to bulk samples of soil and clastic sediments such as till; usually expressed as kg m3-1.
BURIED VALLEY: A valley which has been filled by unconsolidated deposits, such as glacial drift.
CARBONATE ROCK: A rock composed of carbonate minerals; most commonly limestone or dolomite; a sedimentary rock composed of more than 50% by weight of carbonate minerals.
CHANNELED BY MELTWATER*: Erosion and channel formation by glacial meltwater*.
CINDER CONE: A steep-sided conical hill formed by the accumulation of cinders and other pyroclastic deposits around a volcanic vent; normally of basaltic or andesitic composition.
CIRQUE: A rounded recess in a mountain formed by glacial erosion, with steep head and side walls, and a relatively gently-sloping floor that is commonly a basin with a small lake and terminated downvalley by a convex break of slope. Cirques range in diameter from a few hundred meters to several kilometers. They occur at the head of, or cut into the flanks of, glacial troughs.
CLAST: An individual particle of a detrital sediment or a sedimentary rock, initially produced by the disintegration of a larger mass of bedrock; classified according to size as pebbles, boulders etc.