Homework #5               Glaciology, GEOL 4888,  Spring 2019 Humphrey

1. Needed, a couple of sentences on what you are planning to write about for the term project. You need to say what cold regions process, landform or problem that you want to address, AND a thought on what approach you are going to take (such as trying to apply something you have learned in this course, or a literature review [which requires a good bibliography] or what ever you decide.  

2. The Dinwoody glacier below Gannet peak in the Wind River range has a surface slope of 9 degrees. I have used radar to measure the depth of this glacier as 90m. A recent report claims that the glacier is virtually ‘dead’ and stagnant. Since ‘dead’ ice usually has a basal shear stress of less than 100KPa, use the measured data to argue if the glacier really is dead?

3 The Greenland ice sheet is about 1100km wide at the latitude of the arctic circle. Assume the ice divide is in the middle, and plot the profile of the ice sheet from the margin to the center ice-divide. You can assume the ice flows east/west and doesn’t diverge or converge. Label the central depth.

4 If the ELA is about 50km inland from the margin, and the average accumulation rate is 20cm/year, calculate the balance velocity at the ELA. We have measured the actual velocity in this region to be about 115m/yr.