What lies beneath: A detailed bathymetry of the sea-floor below Ekström Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

• Main Authors: Smith, Emma C., Drews, Reinhard, Ehlers, Todd, Franke, Dieter, Gaedicke, Christoph, Hofstede, Coen, Kuhn, Gerhard, Lambrecht, Astrid, Mayer, Christoph, Tiedemann, Ralf, Eisen, Olaf
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: East Antarctica; Dronning Maud Land; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/49605/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/49605/1/EGU2019_ECSmith_7454.pdf; https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/EGU2019-7454.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.022e4808-18fa-453c-9738-8e8f8ec5e5a7; https://hdl.handle.net/

An extensive grid of seismic reflection data collected on Ekstro¨m Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, between 2010–2018, using an on-ice vibroseis source and snowstreamer, are used to make a detailed bathymetry map of the sea floor and ice-shelf cavity. The maps shows a deep sea-floor trough, likely a paleao-ice stream, under the western side of the ice shelf. The trough contains a number of points of higher topography, indicating probable former grounding line positions. At the shelf front a sill running across the width of the shelf has implications for ocean circulation and thus ice-ocean interaction and ice shelf melt. This new bathymetry is markedly different from previous models, which show a generally flat and shallow sea floor in the region. This is presumably the case for many of the smaller ice-shelves in Dronning Maud Land, which highlights the need for better bathymetry measurements in these key threshold regions