Because high suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in melt waters may cause damage to hydro-electric powergenerating machinery, the ability to predict the suspended sediment loads of pro-glacial streams is important for economic reasons. The study to which this abstract refers examines how the sliding velocity of a glacier might help to account for some of the variance of SSC in a pro-glacial ...

Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that terminate in, and calve icebergs into, the ocean. In addition to the influence that tidewater glaciers have on physical and chemical oceanography, floating icebergs serve as habitat for marine animals such as harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii). The availability and spatial distribution of glacier ice in the fjords is likely a key environmental variable ...

Fourteen englacial conduits were mapped within 2 km of the terminus of the temperate Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, USA, to ice depths of 65m using speleological techniques. Detailed threedimensional maps of the conduits were made over 3 years to characterize conduit relationships with glacier structural features and to track conduit evolution through time. All conduits consisted of single unbranch...

Arcuate glacier structures known as ogives are common to valley glaciers flowing below large icefalls and form annually. Long sequences comprising tens of ogives are often preserved on glacier surfaces. We explore their utility as unique sources of information about glacier behavior. Our investigation concentrates on two main objectives: (1) to assess any correlation between an ogive train and ...

The increased availability of remote sensing platforms with appropriate spatial and temporal resolution, global coverage and low financial costs allows for fast, semi-automated, and cost-effective estimates of changes in glacier parameters over large areas. Remote sensing approaches allow for regular monitoring of the properties of alpine glaciers such as ice extent, terminus position, volume a...

The study presents investigations of the runoff from snow and ice, carried out in the high alpine basin of the Rhône river at Sion (3371 km2, 491 -4634 m a.s.l.). Using satellite remote sensing data, features like the snow coverage in the whole basin, the gradually decreasing snow coverage on glaciers and the area of exposed ice have been mapped. The periodical monitoring of the basin is based ...

We measured stream temperature continuously during the 2011 summer run-off season (May through October) in nine watersheds of Southeast Alaska that provide spawning habitat for Pacific salmon. The nine watersheds have glacier coverage ranging from 0% to 63%. Our goal was to determine how air temperature and watershed land cover, particularly glacier coverage, influence stream temperature across...

The Little Ice Age maximum extent of glaciers in Iceland was reached about 1890 AD and most glaciers in the country have retreated during the 20th century. A model for the surface mass balance and the flow of glaciers is used to reconstruct the 20th century retreat history of Hoffellsjökull, a south-flowing outlet glacier of the ice cap Vatnajökull, which is located close to the southeastern co...

Mountain glaciers sample a combination of climate fields – temperature, precipitation and radiation – by accumulation and melting of ice. Flow dynamics acts as a transfer function that maps volume changes to a length response of the glacier terminus. Long histories of terminus positions have been assembled for several glaciers in the Alps. Here I analyze terminus position histories from an ense...

A simple model uses daily observations of precipitation and temperature at a nearby weather station to estimate glacier-average seasonal mass-balance components at South Cascade Glacier, Washington, USA, from 1935, 24 years before measurements began at the glacier. This is 13 years earlier than measurements that can be derived using the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis database (begins 1 January 1948). Alt...