C51C-0750
Bed Properties of the Taku Glacier from Flowline Modeling Inversion
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Isabel Suhr, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, United States, James Headen, Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC, United States, Sydney Le Cras, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CA, United States, Elisabeth Marshall, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, United States, James O'Neil, University of Maine, Orono, ME, United States, Laurel Rand-Lewis, Harvard-Westlake High School, Los Angeles, CA, United States and Kiya L Riverman, Pennsylvania State University Main Campus, University Park, PA, United States
Abstract:
The Taku glacier in SE Alaska is the world’s deepest and thickest alpine temperate glacier, with the potential for interesting changes in flow dynamics in the coming decades as it erodes fully through the marine sediment package it currently flows over. With limited field data constraining the glacier’s current bed elevation and basal slip rate, modeling efforts of present and future glacier dynamics have been limited. Here we present the first 1D Shallow Shelf Approximation finite difference flowline model of the Taku glacier. We run the model with field data collected annually by the Juneau Icefield Research Program, including mass balance derived from shallow ice-penetrating radar and snow pits and bed elevation from active seismics. We vary bed elevation and bed slipperiness parameters in order to fit the modeled glacier surface to the GPS-derived observed surface elevation profile and velocities. In lieu of more extensive seismic surveying on Taku, the best-fitting bed elevation profile product presented here will be useful for future predictive modeling efforts of Taku flow dynamics.
