THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER ACTIVE.
In many parts of the upper midwest, the greatest extent of the Late Wisconsinan ice sheet advance is marked by broad belts of high-relief hummocky landscape. This kind of terrain is thought to have formed as the slow-moving or stagnant ice margins melted non-uniformly beneath a thickening blanket of supraglacial sediment. Similar processes may be occurring on some modern valley glaciers, whose recent thinning has been accompanied by mass wasting from newly-exposed valley walls. We have sought to model the coupled heat transfer and short-range sediment transport processes in these settings to better understand wastage of debris-covered ice and its paleoclimatic and contemporary water-resource implications. This project has involved computer modeling, remote sensing, and field studies of contemporary de-icing at Emmons Glacier on the northeast face of Mount Rainier, Washington, which is partly blanketed with supraglacial debris.
Related Publications
Moore, P.L., 2021, Numerical simulation of debris mobility: implications for ablation and landform genesis. Frontiers in Earth Science, doi: 10.3389/feart.2021.710131.
Moore, P.L., L.I. Nelson, and T.M.D. Groth, 2019, Debris properties and mass-balance impacts on adjacent debris-covered glaciers, Mount Rainier, USA. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research, v. 51(1), p. 70-83. doi:10.1080/15230430.2019.1582269.
Moore, P.L. 2018, Stability of supraglacial debris, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, v. 48(1), p. 285-297. doi: 10.1002/esp.4244.
Moore, P.L., L.I. Nelson, and T.M. Dits, 2014, Melting the rocky terminus of Emmons Glacier, Science Brief - Mount Rainier National Park, 2p.
Related Resources
DCGsimulation. A GitHub repository with Matlab code for modeling melt and local debris redistribution on debris-covered glaciers.
Contacts: Pete Moore