The detailed study of glacier beds using radio-echo techniques

• Published in: Geophysical Journal International
• Main Authors: Walford, M. E. R., Harper, M. F. L.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 1981
• Subjects: Articles; Arctic
• Online Access: http://gji.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/67/2/487; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-246X.1981.tb02762.x

The paper discusses the phase-sensitive radio-echo sounder as an instrument for probing the detailed shape of a reflecting glacier bed. Results from laboratory model experiments and from field experiments in the Arctic are presented, together with a wave-theoretical background. A useful, simple field technique involves establishing the ray directions of prominent targets detected from the snow surface. Given some computing capability in the field this method can be enhanced by software echo-pulse compression techniques. A different approach is based upon the synthesis of large apertures in the snow surface and the geometry of reflecting surfaces has been measured thus, in field and laboratory model situations. This technique is potentially valuable. It is limited in principle by diffraction and by refraction in ice. In practice it would be prohibitively laborious where thick ice overlies a complicated surface.