Geological Controls on Glacier Surging?: Statistics and Speculation

Abstract:

Glacier surging represents an end-member behavior in the spectrum of ice dynamics, involving marked acceleration and high flow speeds due to abrupt changes in basal mechanics. Though much effort has been devoted to understanding the role of basal hydrology and thermal regime in fast glacier flow, fewer studies have addressed the potential role of the geologic substrate. One interesting observation is that surge-type glaciers appear almost universally associated with unconsolidated (till) beds, and several large-scale statistical studies have revealed correlations between glacier surging and bedrock properties. We revisit this relationship using field measurements.

We selected 20 individual glaciers for sampling in a 40x40 km region of the St. Elias Mountains of Yukon, Canada. Eleven of these glaciers are known to surge and nine are not. The 20 study glaciers are underlain by lithologies that we have broadly classified into two types: metasedimentary only and mixed metasedimentary-granodiorite. We characterized geological and geotechnical properties of the bedrock in each basin, and analyzed the hydrochemistry and mineralogy and grain size distribution (GSD) of the suspended sediments in the proglacial streams. Here we focus on some intriguing results of the GSD analysis.

Using statistical techniques, including significance testing and principal component analysis, we find that: (1) lithology determines GSD for non-surge-type glaciers, with metasedimentary basins associated with finer mean grain sizes and mixed-lithology basins with coarser mean grain sizes, but (2) the GSDs associated with surge-type glaciers are intermediate between the distributions described above, and are statistically indistinguishable between metasedimentary and mixed lithology basins. The latter suggests either that surge-type glaciers in our study area occur preferentially in basins where various processes conspire to produce a characteristic GSD, or that the surge cycle itself exerts an influence on grain size that masks the basic lithological control. If the presence of till promotes flow instability, our results suggest that the distribution of fines in the till may be an important geologic control on glacier dynamics.