The Impact of Sampling Density on Glacier Mass Balance Determination

• Main Author: Mauri S. Pelto
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Key Words; Glacier; Mass balance; Sampling density; Lemon Creek; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.120.8211; http://www.easternsnow.org/proceedings/2000/pelto1.pdf

To assess the impact of sampling density on determination of a glacier’s annual mass balance, we used varying densities of measurement to determine annual mass balance on Columbia Glacier, Washington, and Lemon Creek Glacier, Alaska. The density of the mass balance network ranged from 1 point/km 2 to an absurdly dense 375 points/km 2. The results on both glaciers indicate significant improvement in accuracy resulting from increasing the total number of measurements from 10 to 40 points. The accuracy only slightly improved from increasing the total number of measurements from 40 to 300 + sites. There was not a significant improvement in accuracy on the smaller Columbia Glacier for utilizing more than 100 points/km 2. On Lemon Creek Glacier there was little improvement in mass balance assessment for a network greater than 10 points/km 2.