Quantifying Long-Term Glacial Erosion in Antarctica with Numerical Modeling and Thermochronology
Final Report Abstract
The programs developed in this project advanced our understanding of glacial erosion processes under ice-sheets in two ways: First, temporal and spatial variations in glacial erosion over multiple glacialinterglacial cycles have been quantified, and indicate a large variability in glacial erosion between glaciations. A key factor of these variations is how the hypsometry and climate of the catchment change through time. Second, a detailed comparison between erosion models based on the shallow ice approximation (SIA) and high order (HO) ice mechanics models demonstrates the conditions under which the simpler SIA approach can be used. We found that if glaciers are continually in a cold based state and frozen to their bed that the SIA is sufficient. Detrital thermochronology provides an observational tool that can be used to evaluate glacial erosion models and potentially link predicted observed patterns in glacial erosion to different driving mechanisms such as climate change.
Publications
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2012, Global climate and tectonic controls on the denudation of glaciated mountains, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, pp. 63- 75
Yanites, B.J., Ehlers, T.A.
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2015, Ice flow models and glacial erosion over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, Earth Surface Dynamics, 3, 153-170
Headley, R.M., and Ehlers, T.A.
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Identifying spatial variations in glacial catchment erosion with detrital thermochronology, Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface vol 120 issue 6, June 2015, Pages 1023-1039
Ehlers, T.A., Szameitat, A., Enkelmann, E., Yanites, B.J., Woodsworth, G.J.
