Glaciology

Dr. Julie Palais Program Manager

I-139-M	NSF/OPP Award 02-30338
Station: McMurdo Station
RPSC POC: Jessie Crain
Research Site(s): McMurdo Station, Blood Falls, Lake Hoare
Dates in Antarctica: Late October to early February

Mechanics of dry-land calving of ice cliffs

Dr. Bernard Hallet University of Washington Quaternary Research Center hallet@u.washington.edu [No website]

Photo not available.

Deploying Team Members:

Lou Albershardt . Andrew George Fountain . David Alfred Gottlieb . Michelle Koutnik . Thomas Henry Nylen . Erin Christine Pettit . John Robinson . Peter James Sniffen . Erin Nicole Whorton

Research Objectives: Taylor Glacier's terminus is a 30 meter high dry-land calving ice cliff. It is the most actively calving terminus in the Dry Valleys. This project will monitor the behavior of the ice cliff to determine the dominant processes involved in its evolution and study the similarities and differences with water-calving cliffs. At three sites, project team members will measure the ice deformation and temperature fields near the cliff face using a combination of strain gages, tilt sensors, thermistors, and a GPS surface strain network. An ablation stake network will augment existing energy balance data, and a small seismic network will monitor local “ice quakes” associated with ice cracking at the terminus and calving events. The instruments will be left over one winter to identify the effect of the seasonal cycles of temperature and solar radiation. These data will be combined with time lapse photography to document ice cliff evolution. Ultimately, the field data will be used to test and validate a computer model which will enable researchers to explore the sensitivity of ice cliff evolution to diverse glacier characteristics, including basal sliding rate, ice temperature, and angle of incident solar radiation.