"GSA Field Forum- "Glaciohydraulic Supercooling, Freeze-on, Stratified Basal Ice and Deformable Till Beds": Matanuska Glacier, Alaska"

Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract OPP 00-01503 Evenson This award will support the participation of several foreign scientists and U.S. graduate students to attend the inaugural Geological Society of America field conference. This conference is designated to introduce, and generate discussion of an important, new debris entrainment and transport process operating at temperate glaciers. The theory that glaciohydraulic supercooling and the associated ice growth (frazil and anchor ice terraces) and debris entrainment is occurring at the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska has clearly been demonstrated. It has also been demonstrated that thick, debris-laden, stratified basal ice is recent and is directly related to the supercooling, freeze-on process. In addition, both the Malispina and Bering are currently experiencing supercooling and freeze-on. The importance of the freeze-on process is that it provides a significant new debris entrainment and transport mechanism. Unfortunately, only those working in the Principal Investigator's research group have ever witnessed the field evidence for this new mechanism. Therefore, they hope that this field conference will engender discussions on the nature and importance of glaciohydraulic supercooling and the associated debris entrainment processes. They are also confident that after the glaciologists are exposed to the field evidence for this process, that it will be embraced by the community and integrated into models of debris entrainment and transport in the same way that "deformable bed theory" impacted the field in the last decade.