Amplification of Surface Topography during Surges of Tweedsmuir Glacier ...

• Main Author: Sharp, Meghan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Science 2021
• Subjects: Glacier; Wavelet Transform; Fourier Transform; Photogrammetry; Structure from Motion; Geography; Geology; FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; Geophysics; Physical Geography; Remote Sensing; Canada; Tweedsmuir Glacier; glacier*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/39300; https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/113988

The recent development and improvement of remote sensing sensor technology and processing techniques has expanded the spatiotemporal basis of glacier monitoring, where in situ measurements are limited. With these developments, this thesis aims to identify periods of enhanced basal sliding from glacier surface digital elevation models (DEMs) of Tweedsmuir Glacier, a surge-type glacier in the St. Elias Mountains, Canada. We divide this problem into two study objectives: 1) reconstruct surface elevations on a multidecadal timescale, and 2) identify signatures of surges in the surface topography of Tweedsmuir Glacier. Structure-from-Motion with Multiview Stereo photogrammetry, an emerging technique in glaciology, was employed to reconstruct surface DEMs using historical imagery from 1950 to 1987. The photogrammetric DEMs were combined with more recent satellite DEMs acquired between 2000 and 2018 to calculate surface elevation changes throughout two complete surge cycles. An increase in surface elevation is ...