Submarine Landforms and Late Quaternary Ice Flow in Hinlopen Strait, Northern Svalbard Margin

• Main Author: Batchelor, Christine
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge 2010
• Subjects: Hinlopen Trough; Svalbard; Hinlopen Strait; Ice Sheet; Svalbard margin
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.9646; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/264240

The Hinlopen Trough is a 70km long cross-shelf trough on the Northern Svalbard margin. During the last glacial period, this trough is thought to have been occupied by an ice stream which flowed north across the continental slope (Ottesen et al., 2007). This project is concerned with examining the submarine landforms and acoustic stratigraphy of this palaeo-ice stream with a view to furthering our understanding of past ice-flow dynamics in this area. Establishing the direction and dynamics of ice flow around the margins of palaeo-ice sheets has recently become a topic of much geophysical and geological research; a comprehensive understanding of the geometry and dynamics of past ice sheets is crucial to predicting the behaviour of modern ice sheets in response to a changing climate. The data that will be utilised in this project was collected during the geophysical cruise of the RRS James Clark Ross in 2006. This investigation will use a variety of geophysical and geological data sets to describe, map and interpret the geomorphology of the sea bed and to outline the distribution of the submarine landforms in Hinlopen Trough. Observations from this former ice stream will be considered in relation to their implications on the ice-flow dynamics of the last ice sheet present over Svalbard.