Antarctica: Measuring Glacier Velocity from Satellite Images

Many Landsat images of Antarctica show distinctive flow and crevasse features in the floating part of ice streams and outlet glaciers immediately below their grounding zones. Some of the features, which move with the glacier or ice stream, remain visible over many years and thus allow time-lapse mea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Lucchitta, B. K., Ferguson, H. M.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 1986
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.234.4780.1105
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.234.4780.1105
Description
Summary:Many Landsat images of Antarctica show distinctive flow and crevasse features in the floating part of ice streams and outlet glaciers immediately below their grounding zones. Some of the features, which move with the glacier or ice stream, remain visible over many years and thus allow time-lapse measurements of ice velocities. Measurements taken from Landsat images of features on Byrd Glacier agree well with detailed ground and aerial observations. The satellite-image technique thus offers a rapid and cost-effective method of obtaining average velocities, to a first order of accuracy, of many ice streams and outlet glaciers near their termini.