Importance of Glacier-Permafrost Interactions in the Preservation of a Proglacial Icing: Fountain Glacier, Bylot Island, Canada

• Main Authors: Pablo A. Wainstein, Brian J. Moorman, Ken Whitehead
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Bylot Island; glacial hydrology; glacier; GPR; icing; naled; Arctic; Canada; Fountain Glacier; glacier*; permafrost
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.557.2120; http://people.ucalgary.ca/~moorman/WNICOP2008.pdf

Fountain Glacier is hydrologically unique in the Canadian Arctic for the large perennial icing in its proglacial valley. It is hypothesized that the icing holds information on the glacier hydrology and the role permafrost has on the overall hydrological system. A spring first observed in 1991, down valley from the glacier, is thought to be supplied by pressurized subglacial water. Aerial and geophysical surveys have been used in conjunction with thermal-hydrological modeling to study the spring’s stability and longevity of the icing. Results indicate that there is a well established temporal relationship between changes experienced by the glacier and the icing. It is suggested that the relationship between glacier and permafrost, is an unstable equilibrium, where the glacier drives the system out of equilibrium by altering the proglacial hydraulic conditions as it retreats, whereas the growth of permafrost restores the system back to a new hydro-thermal balance.