Topography, ice thickness and ice volume of the glacier Pedersenbreen in Svalbard, using GPR and GPS

Polar research

Zhi Tan¹  Chunxia Zhou¹  Zemin Wang¹  Dongchen E¹  Songtao Ai²  Weijun Sun³  Kim Holmén⁴ 

[1] Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and MappingWuhan University, Wuhan 430079, People's Republic of China;Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and MappingWuhan University, Wuhan 430079, People's Republic of ChinaCorrespondence;Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research InstituteChinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, People's Republic of China;Norwegian Polar InstituteFram Centre, NO-9296 Tromsø, Norway

关键词: GPR;    GPS;    glacier topography;    ice volume;    ice thickness;    Pedersenbreen;   

DOI  :  10.3402/polar.v33.18533

学科分类：自然科学（综合）

来源: Co-Action Publishing

【 摘 要 】

Pedersenbreen is a small valley glacier (ca. 6 km2 in 2009), ending on land, located in north-western Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Ground-based radio-echo sounding in April 2009, using a 100-MHz commercial radar and a self-made low-frequency radar, revealed a polythermal structure. The radar was coupled with a global positioning system device to geo-reference the traces. Each radar profile was manually edited to pick the reflection arrival time from the interface between ice and bedrock. Travel times were converted to ice thickness using a velocity of 0.165 m/ns, which was estimated from common mid-point measurement. Then the surface topography, bedrock topography, ice thickness contours and ice volume were derived using interpolation methods. Because it was difficult to distinguish the reflection wave from the background with the 100-MHz radar in some of the thickest areas of Pedersenbreen, we used a 5-MHz radar of our own design to fill in this gap. The maximum thickness of Pedersenbreen reaches 183±9 m, and ...

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC