Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Glaciology
A New Technique For Firn Grain-Size Measurement Using Sem Image Analysis, N.E. Spaulding, D.A. Meese, I. Baker, P.A. Mayewski
A New Technique For Firn Grain-Size Measurement Using Sem Image Analysis, N.E. Spaulding, D.A. Meese, I. Baker, P.A. Mayewski
Dartmouth Scholarship
Firn microstructure is accurately characterized using images obtained from scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Visibly etched grain boundaries within images are used to create a skeleton outline of the microstructure. A pixel-counting utility is applied to the outline to determine grain area. Firn grain sizes calculated using the technique described here are compared to those calculated using the techniques of Gow (1969) and Gay and Weiss (1999) on samples of the same material, and are found to be substantially smaller. The differences in grain size between the techniques are attributed to sampling deficiencies (e.g. the inclusion of pore filler in the …