Flow of the Amery Ice Shelf and its tributary glaciers

• Main Authors: Pittard, ML, Roberts, JL, Warner, RC, Galton-Fenzi, BK, Watson, CS, Coleman, R
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Curran Associates, Inc. 2013
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; Glaciology; Amery; Amery Ice Shelf; Antarctic; East Antarctic Ice Sheet; Mellor; Mellor Glacier; Antarc*; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelf
• Online Access: http://www.proceedings.com/17862.html; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/86477

The Amery Ice Shelf (AIS) is a major ice shelf that drains approximately16% of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here weuse a sequence of visible spectrum Landsat7 satellite imagesto track persistent surface features over the southern portion ofthe AIS and its three major tributary glaciers. A spatially incompletevelocity field is calculated by comparing the distancesfeatures have moved between image pairs. Key features of theflow field including the vorticity and strain rate distributions arediscussed. Our velocities agree with results from recent compilationof satellite derived velocities and available Global PositionSystem (GPS) measurements. To assess change, we comparethe yearly average velocities from image pairs in 2006 and2010 over the study region. We find the velocities show minimalchanges with the exception of the Mellor Glacier which hasincreased.