Collaborative Research: Initiation, Propagation, and Termination: Understanding coupled hydrologic and glacier dynamic instabilities from the surge of Turner Glacier

Glaciers and ice sheets are rapidly shrinking, with implications for local water resources, biogeochemical properties of streams, rivers, fjords, and oceans, and global sea level rise. As air temperatures warm, melting water from glaciers can be transported to the base of the glaciers where the ice meets the bedrock below. The addition of this water has caused dramatic acceleration of ice flow for some glaciers, small flow changes in others, and even deceleration for other glaciers. Changes in ice flow can be dramatic and unstable, leading to rapid glacier loss that cannot be predicted using current ice flow models. This project aims to better understand the links between glacier hydrology and ice flow by studying an event called a glacier surge during which the ice flow increases dramatically for a period of a few years. The project will conduct an integrated field, remote sensing, and modeling study of a glacier surge at Turner Glacier in Southeast Alaska. The scientific insights gained here will have broad applicability across glacier and ice sheet conditions in many parts of the Arctic and Antarctic, reducing uncertainties in predictions of global glacier loss in the coming decades. The project will strengthen the glacier research programs at Idaho's two largest universities through interdisciplinary inclusive research, outreach, and community building.

The project will collect in-situ seismic, radar, geodetic, meteorological, and time-lapse imagery of hydrologic and glacier dynamics instabilities occurring throughout the upcoming surge of Turner Glacier. The team will combine in-situ observations with satellite-derived glacier velocity, elevation, terminus position, and subglacial plume data to map meltwater routing beneath the glacier during the initiation, propagation, and termination of the surge. These data will be paired with a state-of-the-art hydrologic numerical modeling to investigate the evolution of the controls on the hydrologic and dynamic glacier instabilities throughout the full surge. The unprecedented dataset, coupled with modern models, will yield improved, process-based understanding of a fundamental, 50-plus year-old, first-order question in glaciology: What controls the initiation, propagation, and termination of glacier surges? Given that the interplay between glacier hydrology, basal processes, and glacier flow remains one of the most fundamental questions in glaciology, the results of this project have broad societal impacts. Any insights into rapid instabilities in glacier flow triggered by climate will considerably advance our predictive capabilities of glacier change, and our ability to understand the impacts of ice mass loss on the Earth system.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.