The edge of Wordie Gletscher, East Greenland

 This is a fabulous image of a land-terminating glacier edge in NE Greenland -- Wordie Gletscher -- which has relatively clean ice and a narrow belt of small moraines just beyond its edge.  (Another part of the same glacier does terminate in the sea.)  That means that the ice is now retreating from a stillstand position.  Why does this glacier seem to transport so little debris?  The simple answer may be that it is frozen onto its bed -- and so should be called a cold-based or "polar" glacier.  But I suspect that the answer is a bit more complex than that......