Geodynamics Course Projects

2018 Geodynamics Course Projects

Modeling Glacial erosion using ice velocity and rock strength in Coastal Alaska

Will Kochtitzky and Ian Nesbitt

This project uses a very basic, very generalized, "fudge factored" rock cohesion classification (shown below) to estimate erosion in coastal Alaska at present and throughout the last 115,000 years. Modeled velocity and ice extent data provided graciously by Annie Boucher.

Seen here is a an estimate of glacial erosion based on the velocity-driven erosion model of Humphrey and Raymond (1994) since 115 thousand years before present.

Seen here is the same model applied to a modern velocity dataset (Altena et al., in review) which uses a finer resolution.

References

• Altena, B., Scambos, T., Fahnestock, M., & Kääb, A. (2018). Extracting recent short-term glacier velocity evolution over Southern Alaska from a large collection of Landsat data. The Cryosphere Discussions, (May), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2018-66

• Humphrey, N. F., & Raymond, C. F. (1994). Hydrology, erosion and sediment production in a surging glacier: Variegated Glacier, Alaska, 1982–83. Journal of Glaciology, 40(136), 539–552. https://doi.org/10.3189/S0022143000012429