Glaciology Commons^™

Toward The Significance Of Crevasse Orientation In Low And High Crevassed Regions On The Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, Usa, Claire A. Sturm

DePaul Discoveries

Supraglacial landforms serve as potential indicators of underlying bedrock morphology and glacier dynamics. The distribution and morphology of crevasses are closely associated with stress fields and ice-flow regimes, representing processes of stable glaciers, in contrast to their reduced occurrence in stagnant or receding ice masses. The orientation and density of crevasses influence a glacier’s ability to absorb solar energy, as they facilitate movement of meltwater down to subglacial rivers. Beyond the meltwater acting as a lubricant for basal sliding, the slope of the bedrock further impacts the local velocity and ice deformation of a glacier. The study of ice-fracturing mechanics …

Glacier Elevation Difference Data For The Conterminous U.S., Andrew G. Fountain, Bryce Allen Glenn, Christopher Mcneil, Brian Menounos

Geology Faculty Datasets

Historic and recent elevation data for the glaciers in the conterminous US were differenced to estimate glacier mass and volume change.

Historic glacier elevations were obtained from the USGS National Elevation Dataset (https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.04), a digitized product from the USGS 1:24,000 paper topographic maps that included the glacier extent (Gesch, 2007). Recent glacier elevations were derived from aerial lidar and from satellite radar. The lidar data were largely obtained from the USGS 3D Elevation Program (Stoker and Miller, 2022; US Geological Survey, 2024), and filtered by acquisition date using only those data collected between mid-summer and early autumn. The …

The Case For Ice Rises At Ross Bank Since The Middle Miocene, William Weber

LSU Master's Theses

Many tens of ice rises exist at the marine margins of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Isle-type ice rises in particular are those where an ice shelf is pinned to an underlying submarine bank. Recent and ongoing studies show that Ross Bank, on the middle continental shelf of central Ross Sea, was the former site of an important Ross Ice Shelf ice rise during the advance and retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) in the last glacial cycle. Ross Bank is a broad and anomalously shallow water platform whose crest rises to 170 m water depth. Despite their importance …

Using Grounded Iceberg Wake Patterns To Interpret Catastrophic Flood Events In Southcentral Alaska, Jana K. Macinnis

All Master's Theses

Catastrophic flood events such as landslide tsunamis and jökulhlaups in glaciated areas can transport and strand icebergs, which obstruct the flow of floodwaters and leave a unique and recognizable grounded iceberg wake pattern in the sediment surface. Grounded iceberg wake patterns (GIWs) were identified at the two study areas in Southcentral Alaska; the outwash plain of a 1967 landslide tsunami at the Grewingk Glacier and proglacial lake, and the Matanuska River valley which experienced an unrecorded jökulhlaup in recent geological times. From these sites, 110 GIWs were identified through visual interpretation of lidar imagery and characterized by measuring their geometry, …