Skip to main content

Glacier mapping with LiDAR

I spent three days last week mapping glaciers using ground-based LiDAR. The instrument is able to measure very precisely. Marainne Okal and Thomas Nylen from UNAVCO came out to Lake Hoare to run the instrument and to teach me how to operate the instrument. We intend to repeat the mapping at the end of the season to determine change (ablation and movement).

We mapped a glacier cliff and basin on Canada Glacier for the first two days. The instrument captures 2000 points a second that are organized into x, y, and z dimensions. These points can be georeferenced into lat/long/elevation. The LiDAR mapped the cliff and basin with an accuracy of 1 cm or better. Here are some photos of the cliff (left)and basin (right):



The third day we ventured to Don Juan Pond rock glacier via helicopter. Don Juan Pond is a hyper-saline lake in Wright Valley. The lake is very unique and is a protected area. Right above the lake is a rock glacier (a glacier that is covered with rock debris). We mapped the entire lower half at 10 cm and subsampled smaller plots at 1 cm accuracy.

Rock glaciers occur through out the world including the Western US. Similar features were recently found on Mars (see here). The similarities between the Dry Valleys and Mars are rather astonishing.

Popular posts from this blog

White River Glacier Station 983

The deep canyon below White River Glacier is the product of fire and ice. Volcanic eruptions, bulldozing glaciers, and lahars have created a raw and dynamic landscape on the southeast slope of Mount Hood. How fast is the landscape changing? Glacial moraines, often used to indicate past glacial extents, are heavily eroded or completely absent. Repeat historical photographs offer a view to how the canyon and the glacier has changed over the past 120 years. Harry F. Reid took two photographs from either side of the White River Glacier in 1901. These photos have the potential to assist with mapping the historical glacier perimeter but finding the location of the eastern photograph, frame 983, had vexed me during two previous visits. The photograph features the glacier terminus as viewed from the east with the top of the mountain obscured by clouds. In the foreground are two tree stumps, likely remnants of the ghost forest that formed by the Old Maid eruption in the late-1700s. The ty...
Read more

Glacier Rephotos from Mount Rainier

I posted a new batch of glacier repeat photos from Mount Rainier . Mount Rainier was quite an undertaking as it’s glaciers have been studied for a long time and there were many established photo stations.  Last September I traveled to the mountain as part of the Glacier Rephoto Database Project to document the photo stations and acquire new repeat photographs to record the changes. Last year was focused on the Glacier-clad Volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest. Nisqually Glacier, Station 5 Mount Rainier is a big mountain compared to the other volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest and equally big is the quantity of ice. The grandeur of the mountain and expanse of ice has attracted numerous glacier studies over the past century  including a number of  repeat photography projects. Perhaps the most studied is the Nisqually Glacier.  The glacier has undergone many changes over the past century. The three comparison photos from Station 5 illustrate the glacier a...
Read more

Rephotos of Mount Shasta Glaciers

I visited Mount Shasta on September 7, 2012 to reoccupy glacier photo stations established by Phil Rhodes in 1974. Phil is an expert on Mount Shasta’s glaciers and photographed the glaciers for several decades. I was fortunate to meet up with Phil for the first day of photographic surveys on Hotlum Glacier. Phil was invaluable in describing routes to stations and sharing his observations. I visited 10 of his stations at Hotlum, Bolam, Whitney, and Wintun glaciers over several days to record the station locations and rephotograph the scenes. Bolam Glacier: 1977 to 2012 The photo comparisons reveal the complex changes that have been occurring on Mount Shasta since the 1970s. Bolam Glacier receded, the Lower Wintun Glacier advanced, while others appear fairly stable. Past research has shown Whitney Glacier advancing since the 1950s through the early 2000s. The surface of Whitney Glacier appears to have lowered over the past 30 years from a photo station at 10,000 ft eleva...
Read more