Dartmouth Events

Optional ZOOM LINK
Meeting ID: 910 9128 2060
Passcode: 403994

Fast moving glaciers accommodate the majority of their motion via ice slipping atop the beds they rest upon. For soft bedded glaciers, where the beds consist of unconsolidated sediment, the slip results from ice sliding atop the sediment bed and deformation of the sediment bed itself. The relationship between the applied driving stress and the resultant slip velocity is often referred to as the "slip law" and is central to predicting the rates of glacier flow. However, this slip relationship can be difficult to determine from field data as the beds of glaciers are generally quite inaccessible.

Here we use a novel type of experimental device that can slip a ring of temperate ice atop a sediment bed, allowing the functional relationship between basal shear stress and slip velocity to be determined. Experiments were conducted under increasing complexity first with debris free ice, then with a layer of frozen fringe and finally under a transiently evolving basal effective stress to examine how glacier slip varies under a range of conditions.

Hosted by Professor Colin Meyer.