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2003-2004 USAP
Field Season
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Glaciology
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Dr. Julie Palais
Program Manager
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I-161-M
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NSF/OPP
01-25579
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Station:
McMurdo Station
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RPSC POC:
Melissa Rider
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Research Site(s):
McMurdo Station, Taylor Glacier
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Dates in Antarctica:
Mid October to early February
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Dynamics and climatic response of the Taylor Glacier system.
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Dynamics and Climatic Response of the Taylor Glacier System.
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Deploying Team Members:
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John W. Sanders
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Sarah Aciego
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Andrew Bliss
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Kurt Cuffey
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Jeffrey L. Kavanaugh
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David L. Morse
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Research Objectives:
Taylor Glacier drains from Taylor Dome eastward and terminates in Taylor Valley at Lake Bonney. This glacier connects the Taylor Dome region, studied extensively in the early-mid 1990s, to the Taylor Valley ecosystem. Understanding the flow and response of this system is essential for interpreting the glacial geologic record in the southern Dry Valleys, and for understanding long-term changes in the Taylor Valley ecosystem physical environment (especially Lake Bonney).
This project's objective is to understand the Taylor Glacier: how it flows, and how it responds to climatic changes. Project team members will build a comprehensive set of measurements of surface velocity and ablation rates along Taylor Glacier, and also to map subglacial topography. The proposed work is an outgrowth of work done by the New Zealand Program in the mid-1980s (Robinson) and by the University of Washington in 1992-93. Researchers on this project participated in that effort, and in that context completed cross-valley surveys of velocity and basal topography at several locations. In this project, they seek to vastly increase this data set for use in a modeling program to understand climatic response of the Taylor Glacier system. Surface velocities, strain rates, ablation rates, ice thickness, and subglacial topography will be measured.
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